A Quote by Dean Wareham

I guess I could be singing about Superman, or about Zarathustra coming down from the mountain, but in my mind I was singing about Julian Assange. I wish I could say that Nietzsche inspired my lyrics but all I can honestly say is I was inspired by the graphic design of these '70s paperback covers for Beyond Good & Evil and The Birth of Tragedy and The Gay Science.
However, it [singing] wasn't until halfway through high school that it dawned on me that singing wasn't just a hobby, it was something I had a growing need for in my life, and that was about when I adopted the neglected guitar I found under our piano and started singing about all the things I could never say.
'Superman' had nothing to do with the superhero or physical power. It's a reference to the book 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra,' by Friedrich Nietzsche, who wrote about the evolution of consciousness to reach a higher superman state.
[My fashion] line is inspired by real people, so I guess you could say it was listening to them, what they need, what they want and then translating that into coming from me.
Singing about your sadness unburdens your soul. But the blues hollers shouted about more than being sad. They were also delivering messages in musical code. If the master was coming, you might sing a hidden warning to the other field hands . . . The blues could warn you what was coming. I could see the blues was about survival.
Doing the Best I Can' is a sure fire hit. Incredibly commercial. But what could you say about it? Catchy and good to dance to. But 'Nothing Rhymes' is different. A much bigger risk but it was lyrics people could talk about. So that was the one to launch me on.
Ninety-eight percent of the singing I did was private singing - it was in the shower, at the dishwasher, driving my car, singing with the radio, whatever. I can't do any of that now. I wish I could. I don't miss performing, particularly, but I miss singing.
The band that made me want to be a musician in the first place was the Beatles. And I think John Lennon used to say something like, 'We're just a singing group,' when he talked about the band. So that's what I say about Mr. Big - we're a singing group!
I can honestly say that, growing up, it never crossed my mind that I could ever make anything. I could write articles about things, which is why I wanted to be a professor. I loved watching movies and writing about them and teaching them, but it never crossed my mind that I could make something.
I grew up singing and dancing, so people have been calling me gay since fifth grade. I've heard everything you could possibly hear about it. But I do love gay people, so I'm not going to act like I was insulted or angry about it.
I'm hugely inspired by the '60s and the '70s. I just love the music of that time and the overall freedom of that era. I love that the idea of clashing didn't really exist. You could mix prints on prints, you could mix fabrics and colors - and it was more about the way you felt than about the label and trends. That's something that I've always gravitated towards.
I started singing when I was about 3 and dancing soon after. Mom just started looking for outlets where I could perform and availed herself of any opportunity she could in the mountains of North Carolina in the '70s.
Whenever people tell me they don't know how to get inspired, I say "What's the matter with you?! I could stay in my apartment and be inspired!"
For me, singing was always about the lyrics. I'm hopeless at singing songs that don't have a core.
Starting in music, where I get a chance to connect with the lyrics of a song, I learned so much about performing on stage and connecting to your audience and to what you're singing about. Singing is very emotional. Every song has its own purpose.
People say graphic design is so different now, because you have so many more pixels and colors to work with... But when you study art history, you see there's just nothing new under the sun. Mosaics and needlework, it's all analogous to pixel and bitmap art. And with it all, good design's not about what medium you're working in, it's about thinking hard about what you want to do and what you have to work with before you start.
The graphic novel? I love comics and so, yes. I don't think we talked about that. We weren't influenced necessarily by graphic novels but we certainly, once the screenplay was done, we talked about the idea that you could continue, you could tell back story, you could do things in sort of a graphic novel world just because we kind of like that world.
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