Quote collection
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"I don't like to write rhetorically or get on a soapbox. I try to make the stuff multi-layered, so that it always has a life outside its social context. I don't believe that you can tell people anything; you can only draw them in."
"I wanted to be the reasonable voice of revenge for what I'd seen [my father] life come to."
"I wouldn't be windmilling a Fender Telecaster if it weren't for Pete Townshend."
"Madman drummers, bummers, Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat. In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat."
"Sister, I won't ask for forgiveness, my sins are all I have."
"If you listen to the great Beatle records, the earliest ones where the lyrics are incredibly simple. Why are they still beautiful? Well, they're beautifully sung, beautifully played, and the mathematics in them is elegant. They retain their elegance."
"When you`re onstage you have a certain faith that somebody's gonna yell somethin' back. Some nights it's louder than other nights and some nights they do, and on some songs they don't. But that's the idea. I think when you begin to expect a reaction from an audience, it's a mistake."
"It's always felt natural, because I'm generally very comfortable with people."
"Every song has a piece of you in it, because just general regret, love. You have to basically zero in on the truth of those particular emotions."
"My only general rule was to steer away from things I played with the band over the past couple of tours. I was interested in re-shaping the Rising material for live shows, so people could hear the bare bones of that."
"Politics and life go hand in hand."
"Most bands don't work out. A small unit democracy is very, very difficult."
"No, I always felt that amongst my core fans- because there was a level of popularity that I had in the mid '80s that was sort of a bump on the scale- they fundamentally understood the values that are at work in my work."
"Out of the east on an Irish stallion came bounty hunter Dan His heart quickened and burdened by the need to get his man He found Pete peacefully fishing by the river, pulled his gun and got the drop He said, "Pete, you think you've changed, but you have not."
"I hadn't performed by myself in a while. It feels very natural to me, and I assume people come for the very same reasons as they do when I'm with the band: to be moved, for something to happen to them."
"In the past, some of the songs that were the most fun, and the most entertaining and rocking, fell by the wayside because I was concerned with what I was going to say and how I was going to say it."
"Certainly tolerance and acceptance were at the forefront of my music."
"The audiences are there as a result of my history with the band but also as a result of my being able to reach people with a tune."
"Well let there be sunlight, let there be rain Let the brokenhearted love again Sherry, we can run with our arms open before the tide."
"Now those memories come back to haunt me they haunt me like a curse."