Last Updated on
“If I was in a bad mood, then maybe I won’t talk about it, but you’re going to know about it somehow. If something was bothering me, maybe I would have acted a little bit like a child, meaning I go break something in a room.”
“There’s a danger in anything that is unfamiliar. That’s the world we live in.”
“I’m not some young tough guy trying to prove a point anymore.”
“In earlier years, I was more of a clown with a big bag of tricks. I’d show up in the studio and kind of go, ‘Well, what do you want? Do you want the screaming banshee or the howling owl?’”
“I’ve always been in awe of filmmakers and their patience in realizing their vision because I could never do that.”
“When you come into a pre-existing situation, you gotta have your own thing going. You gotta be really strong about it, and you gotta look at the older material in an aggressive way – ‘I’m gonna make this mine somehow.’ You need to put your imprint on the situation that you’re in.”
“With Mr. Bungle, I’d lay down a really rough demo of my vocals and then play them for the guys without telling them what I was saying. Our drummer at the time had the coolest takes on what he thought I was saying, so I’d ask him to write out what he thought the lyrics were.”
“I don’t get too much enjoyment out of sitting around the campfire and looking at old photos. That’s just not me. I don’t get the thrill of doing that. So, I don’t sit around listening to my old records.”
“That’s what my music is good for – clearing out the house and being alone.”
“The creative process for a musician is very different than for a filmmaker. I have an idea, and I can pretty much execute it.”
“Golf is the only sport I’ve encountered where you can really suck but still have a good time.”
“I grew up in a really small town.”
“Movies were, to me, like a way out. It was an escape valve. I remember having my parents drop me off at movies all the time.”
“I’ve had at least a couple botched surgeries.”
“To me, the stage is like the free zone. That’s what makes it exhilarating. For whatever reason, there’s this weird little square where it’s kind of a romper room for adults.”
“There has to be an element of danger, or at least an element of intrigue, for a band to be interesting.”
“Legacy is something you talk about when you’re dead – and I’m not dead yet.”
“The music should speak for itself, and hopefully it will.”
“Relationships are complicated – put it that way, okay?”
“Hearing other peoples’ interpretations of your lyrics, to me, is just a total kick in the pants. Half the time, they’re better.”
“I think you create your own freedom.”
“I think you create your own boundaries, and you work within them.”
“Being able to have a home studio is the greatest thing ever.”
“I write lyrics based on music, on a musical flow, and what sounds good at the time.”
“I’m at a point now where I crave healthy musical environments, where there is a genuine exchange of ideas without repressed envy or resentment, and where people in the band want to be there regardless of what public accolades may come their way. Unfortunately, Mr. Bungle was not one of those places.”
“I always forget about some of the things I’ve done, because you do ’em, and sometimes they don’t come out, and… most of it’s almost like daily chores or something. You check it off your list, and then it’s gone.”
“Forgive me, but Wolfmother, you suck!”
“I’m not in the business of suffering.”
“There are reasons that bands and musicians make demos and outtakes – because they are not good enough to make the record. A lot of people forget that.”
“You can get bored up there on stage, night after night. But it’s an open forum where you can get away with almost anything, so you might as well do it.”
“Touring is a weird thing. It’s like getting married to four different people.”
“I’ve had the new band experience plenty of times, and sometimes, it just sort of peters out.”
“I’m not a trained musician.”
“I remember playing with John Zorn and Ikue Mori in Taiwan in a school classroom. There were, like, 15 people there, maybe, and they were sitting at the classroom desks, and we played under the chalkboard. There’s no difference between playing that and the ‘download’ festival.”
“With Faith No More, even though we’re a bunch of old men, what I remember about our best shows is some sort of confrontation with the audience.”
“Part of what Faith No More shows are is chaos and unpredictability.”
“Not all ideas are like a twinkling star in the sky, and you get inspired to make a record the next day.”
“I had never been taken in like I was in Italy just by saying a few words. That made me feel like I had to put in the effort, and I want to be one of them.”
“When you do live abroad, you’re basically searching for some kind of peace.”
“The only way I can make sense of my music is to compartmentalize it as opposed to having one band that I have to throw everything into. For me, it’s just more fun and more challenging to create little worlds where a song or a piece can make sense.”
“We’re constantly being fed images and being told what to like and what is good, and for the most part, I think people enjoy living that way. It takes a lot of the thinking out of it.”
“Everywhere you look, there’s someone doing your thinking for you and telling you what to think and when to think of it.”
“I like the cut of my gib. I dislike the way I move.”
“I saw G.G. Allin live once.”
“The career high would be putting out a Kids of Widney High CD on my label, Ipecac Recordings.”
“I’m surprised that anyone cares about what I do.”
“If I admire someone’s music, I’ll walk up to ’em and tell ’em.”
“I think that first and foremost, a lot of turntable artists end up using really the same sounds over and over, and they really get recycled.”
“Especially with Fantomas, i’m just trying to stretch out what the band can do. Figuring out, really, on the job or on recordings, what I can or can’t get away with.”
“In a way, sometimes collaborating is more difficult because you have to listen.”
“More traditional guitar, bass, drums – it’s not something completely natural to me. It’s, in a way, exotic.”
“When you have to put on shades in the studio, you know you have to stop.”
“You don’t want to eat haute cuisine all the time; it’s not healthy.”
“Most film scores have one vibe, and they stick with it.”
“Having my own label, I have to look at things in a realistic, bottom-line manner.”
“I am perfectly aware of my position in commercial music.”
“I would like to do more film scoring, period. Whether it is a big film, a small film, or just anything. I feel like I have a lot to learn, and what better way to do it than on the job?”
“I don’t like to use toilets – ever.”
“I’ve got a comfortable home for my music where I can put out whatever the hell I want, and I feel like the slate is really clean, and I can get away with anything. It’s a nice, free feeling.”
“Acting is even stranger than I thought it would be.”
“I know that whatever I put out, whether people think it’s pop or noise or whatever, it’s always going to be some kind of a freak or mutation. It’s not going to be anything pure that a lot of people will relate to. And that’s fine.”
“If they’re acting like a dog, sometimes you’re forced to treat people like dogs.”
“My tools are musicians, effects, things like that.”
“I consciously did not want to put a sub-Mr. Bungle band on the map. I don’t think the world needs that.”
“I don’t actually read that much. I like movies a bit more. That’s how I come up with ideas – by seeing things, hearing things, recycling things. Stealing things!”
“A lot of people assume that musicians are comrades by nature. It’s cutthroat like anything else.”
“A lot of concerts are just too safe.”
“When you’re young and creative, you don’t know how to channel all that creative energy, so sometimes it goes to the wrong places.”
“Most solo artists go out on their own and put their name on the record. I prefer to create little alternative universes.”
“I create a guise or a band that I can operate within, and within each one of those bands, I’ve got an M.O. or a set of rules and parameters I can work within.”
“Some artists can work under one guise, whether it’s a name or a band or doing film soundtracks, put all of their ideas in one pot and move on. Me, I need to compartmentalize.”
“Things die for a reason, and in Bungle’s case, it was a lot of reasons. It was great while it lasted but not something I’d go crawling back to.”
“I like to have a few things going on at once. It feels natural.”
“I have to make an effort about things like going to the grocery store. That stuff reminds me that I don’t live in the real world, and you know what? I’m thankful.”
“It feels really good to be the bad guy, and ‘The Darkness’ is as bad as it gets.”
“All time faves would be ‘Smash TV,’ ‘NHL Hockey,’ ‘Grand Theft Autos,’ ‘NBA Lives,’ ‘Sonic.’”
“I got a PS3 and a PSP. The Wii looks fun.”
“If I’m not happy with the quality of something I’m working on, I won’t put it out. That does not mean that others won’t question the quality.”
“My fear is getting stuck doing the same thing over and over.”
“’A Perfect Place’ is character-driven. The director for that wanted a couple of identifiable themes with a bunch of variations. That is what I did. The director for ‘The Solitude of Prime Numbers’ did not want that at all.”
“You don’t have to release everything you do. Some ideas need to just stay on the shelf.”
“Sometimes a certain project will have a smell… It will have a little stench about it. That is a warning signal. You know it’s going to be a nightmare. You know they are not going to like it, and it’s not worth it.”
“Everything with Peeping Tom is kind of a guessing game. It’s constantly exhilarating but also exhausting.”
“The Faith No More stuff isn’t about me. It was a band. Maybe that’s where a lot of journalists got the wrong idea. You don’t just pluck a song off a tree and put vocals on it.”
“I’m a little tired of travelling the world, jaded as that may sound.”
“I have a big mouth.”
“I’ve always been interested in film, so to get involved in any way in the genesis of making a film or music for a film is fascinating to me.”
“I really don’t want to put more than a couple of records out a year, and I think that makes sense – on an artistic level, but also for my label.”
“As an artist, I would never let myself get boxed in. I’m a human being, too, and like most humans, I have interest in many different types of music.”
“There are so many ideas that I have in my mind, of projects that I would love to tackle, people I would love to work with, genres I would love to experiment with, and sounds that don’t fit any of my previous projects that I need to find a home for.”
“I am constantly amazed at the musicians that are able to do the same thing over and over for 20 or more years. That would drive me absolutely insane.”
“I lived in Italy for quite a while and married an Italian woman. While there, I immersed myself in the complete culture: the music, art, literature, film, food, and history. It’s easy to fall in love with. As a country, Italy does a good job of holding onto its rich traditions and culture. There’s a real lack of embracing history in America.”
“From what I’ve heard, videogame soundtracks – obviously, there’s less budget and all of that – it just seems like game soundtracks are farmed out among friends. And it seems like more of an afterthought. It’s a videogame. It’s much more background.”
“I know where my bread is buttered, and for the most part, I’m better off doing my own thing.”
“I don’t read or write music in the traditional sense, so I have to figure it out on the fly while I’m in the studio.”
“To me, finding sounds, or even recording, is a compositional process. The studio is kind of an instrument.”
“Orchestral musicians have a different approach than we do, and when I say ‘we,’ I mean musicians who don’t know what they are doing.”
“I lived in Bologna. I go back quite often, and I still have lots of connections and lots of friends. It was a nice period in my life.”
“My wife is Italian, and I lived there for six years.”
“Conducting is way over my head.”