At no point do I ever remember taking religion very seriously or even feeling that the biblical stories were any different from fairy stories. Certainly, none of it made any sense. By comparison, the world in which I lived, though I might not always understand it in all aspects, always made a lot of sense.
Sitcoms always made the most sense to me. I grew up watching them every day with my dad. Every Monday, Tuesday night, we would be sitting in front of the television watching any kind of sitcom. I connect with that more, but I love to do whatever kind of role.
Everything had been based on a kind of certainty, a sense of man at the center of things, a sense of order and hierarchy. And suddenly, almost simultaneously, extraordinary discoveries are made.
I never thought of myself as any kind of a film star, as many films as I've made - and I've made some really fun movies with good people. I've always been paired with someone because I'm not really box office, in that carrying-a-picture sense. I've always been busy, but not in the spotlight.
If anybody had a sense of history, it wasn't me, I'll tell you that. I, I was just enjoying life and, and making a living and, and, you know, listening to all this good music. No, there was never in my mind any kind of sense of history, nothing.
I don't have any real spirituality in my life - I'm kind of an atheist - but when music can take me to the highest heights, it's almost like a spiritual feeling. It fills that void for me.
I think once I made up my mind that I was allergic to alcohol, and that's what I learned, it made sense to me. And I think it was kind of pointed out that you know if you were allergic to strawberries, you wouldn't eat strawberries. And that made sense to me.
I think it's almost a law of nature that there are only certain things that hit an emotive space, and that's what was always special for me about music: it made me feel something.
I would find myself being inspired by things that I've heard as a kid: Nigerian music or African music, some French music or some Jamaican music. When it's time for music to be made, it's almost like my ancestors just come into me and then it's them.
It never made sense to me that someone would achieve any kind of success in show business, only to become a jerk.
The great thing about Priest, in all the years that we've been making heavy metal music, is that we've always kind of carried this metal flag, if you will - this beacon of hope that, no matter what you may be going through in life, there's always a sense of overcoming difficulties, a sense of winning, a sense of coming out on top.
I think that's one of the things that has always put me in kind of an odd niche. It's that all of my understanding of orchestral music is via film, not via classical music like it's supposed to be. To me it's the same, it doesn't make any difference.
Parenting put music in the right place for me. Touring was always the first priority before, but it isn't any more. And, paradoxically, that has made my ability to make music much easier.
I like music of almost any kind - including this.
I've done a lot of movies that don't have any music in them, and I've always sort of had a kind of wary attitude about music because it can be so manipulative, and also because with pop music, I feel like everybody kind of has their own relationship to songs.
I always thought the piano scene was kind of unique to shoot because we were actually able to film with the playback of the actual song. And that was quite amazing because it almost made it easier - music is usually something that is added after filming has finished so to be able to shoot a scene with music was really wonderful.