A Quote by Ryuichi Sakamoto
Playing in London in 1979 was exciting: it was at the start of new wave, the transition period after punk, and there were a lot of radical, fashionable young people on the streets and in the venues.
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I guess, for me, what started me getting real excited about music was the New York punk and new-wave scene. All those bands looked back to the Velvet Underground and the Stooges and the Modern Lovers as well. But that was back when Television were punk, and the Talking Heads were punk.
DEVO was like the punk band that non Punk America saw as Punk and so when people who were really into Punk rock would be walking around on the streets the jocks who learned about Punk through Devo would roll down their windows and yell at the Punks: 'HEY, DEVO!!'
Jazz in the 1920s and '30s was dance music, teenage music for parties, for being wild and young. There's this punk feeling I really love. It was something so radical and different and new and not codified. People didn't have a definition of what they were doing.
The high streets I remember best were Seven Sisters Road in north London and then sunny Peckham in south London after we moved there. They were where my parents used to shop. They were great, part of being a teenager.
People would be surprised at how much of an electronic dude I am, and I like new wave, post-punk and proto-punk stuff.
People were consuming on average less calories after the war than during the war. Things were still very tough. If you look at the film footage of London streets, even in areas which weren't slums, there are kids in the streets who are dirty and have no shoes on. It was rough. There was a real edge.
Air Max is from when we were running the streets. It was comfortable to wear in London, whether you were going out to a club or kicking a ball in the streets. Those kinds of things stick in my mind from the young, magical, fantasy years of my life.
I was part of punk's second generation, so, not the first wave of '70s punk, but the American hardcore scene. I had a really strong love for music prior to that, but punk created a new template.
Back in the early 1980s when rappers couldn't perform in the fancy venues because the police were too racist and scared, it was the punk venues letting them in to perform.
I have been fortunate to get different types of work, but by and large till 90s for actors like me there were not many opportunities besides playing brother of the heroine or friend of the hero or young college villain after the earlier new wave was consumed by television.
What was happening with me, with the album [A Period of Transition], with the people who took the pictures, the record company, everything, getting a new manager [Harvey Goldsmith]-it was all saying a period of transition to me so that was the title choice. It says what it is and obviously nobody is going to analyze that. It's exactly what it is.
After the Ramones, it was more about new wave for me than punk.
When Blur first started and we were playing Manchester the Hacienda was the place to go. That was where a lot of exciting stuff was happening and London was pretty dead.
To me, the difference between New York and London is that things are boring and staid in London. But even the sh-tty diner and bars here are kind of exciting for me. Downtown is funky, West Village is beautiful with the cobbled streets, but I love going uptown because you then you go, "F-ck, I'm in New York!" You see all the skyscrapers.
When I first started playing, I definitely had a younger scum-punk crowd, but as my music developed more and after I started playing electric guitar - you'd think it would be opposite - but a lot of people were like, "You've changed." And I have more of an older audience now.
Unfortunately, some of the young talants are becoming fashionable. And anything that's fashionable can become unfashionable. So one has to watch that. And it's very easy today because there are so many events - art fairs, gallery openings, etcetera. In fact, that's another thing that concerns me, the quantity of gallery openings. In my office in London, I get back after a week, and I have 30 invitations. It's too much.
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