For most women, Greenham was a place of principle, growth and song. Often joyful, sometimes terrifying, and almost always cold. As it got harder, with constant evictions and mounting violence from a frustrated and humiliated police force, the women got more determined. It was a community with a shared purpose - to live in peace.
A lot can be said with just a look, or the way the body moves. Each song is a different character. So each song takes on a different movement of the body. And the body has to go with the subject and the attitude that you have toward that subject.
You can tell if something feels special. But there are so many moving parts involved in making the song a hit. The radio has to deliver, the management has to deliver in terms of booking the right promotions... just being a good song isn't enough.
I've been in a recording studio enough times to know that it is not the best place to multitask. Doing a couple of takes of a song and running out to check your email to talk to someone about video production really is not good.
My muse is my wife. It's not some vague thing that flutters around the astrosphere or wherever it is. Sometimes as a songwriter you need something to hang a song on, to give it some kind of presence and form. For me, Susie is that.
Every song that I compose has to satisfy the music director in me.
When I create a song, I immediately think about what I'm going to wear when I perform that song. I think about the music video treatment and about how I'm going to look on stage when I perform the record. The connection is so obvious that it's a single package. An outfit, to me, is almost a tool to express the music.
I think the key to directing a great music video is in making sure the song is great, and if it is, then it becomes really fun.
Whenever I'm writing a song, if I have an idea for the music video, that's how I know it's a good song.
I'm all about telling stories. I like people to picture the music video in their head when they're just listening to the song.
Acting in a music video is basically about lip syncing songs and giving expressions that represent what the song is about. While acting for the silver screen, you have to deliver dialogues, remember them, and you have to be in a certain frame of mind.
I would say when you're dealing with live musicians and musicality, the warmth of a live instrument brings a certain feel to a song that is really hard, sometimes, to get from synthesized instruments.
I don't think there's anything wrong with not knowing how to play an instrument, but the rise of the non-musical producer has done away with musicianship and focused attention purely on the song's hook.
'Europe '72' was a super influential record full of fantastic songs and amazing experimental musicianship. I always valued both of those aspects in what Sonic Youth has done through the years - being able to get very abstract and very concrete within the same song.
As a songwriter I hate this whole, 'If it's a sad song, it has to sound like a sad song thing.' And that goes all the way back to my days with the Format. I'm an insane narcissist, so if I have to get something off my chest, I'll get something off my chest.
I've been to New Zealand before, many times. And of course it has a significance to me because I do have something that's very special in New Zealand. I have '10 Guitars,' which is a very popular song, and I understand it's like the second national anthem over there.
If you forget the words to your own song, you can always claim artistic license. Forget the words to the national anthem, and you're screwed.
I'm not full of malice, but I do dislike Neil Diamond a lot, and I'm sorry that I've done a Neil Diamond song.
Every single tune you know from the 1940s until the 1970s was written, arranged, and demoed in the Brill Building. OK, maybe not every song, but writers from Benny Goodman to Lieber & Stoller to Neil Diamond all kept offices there.
I've always loved that, on all the Dylan and Springsteen and Marley and Neil Young reissues that they've done: It's so cool to hear alternate versions and how the song started in their mind.
