| "The City of Angels director said "Iris" was too agressive. I said, 'This is the most sissy song I have ever written!" -Rolling Stone, November '99 "It's such a thrill to perform live. You never know if you're going to get hit with a bottle or a bra." -The Buffalo News Next Section "I am the only guy in the world with a self-help tattoo." -Rolling Stone, November '99 "I can always tell how good a performance I had by how soaking wet I am, how many guitar strings I broke, and how fast I fall asleep." -Teen People, December '98 "He held my head when I threw up in the toilet. He took me to the hospital to have my stomach pumped. He loaned me twenty bucks last night. He listens to all my lies and ignores me when I'm full of shit. And that's a big difference, if you know what I mean." -John describing the relationship between himself and Robby "I'm an artist man, I can't shit on command." "Don't fucking boo at me, I take it personally." "When I was 18, there were 50 people I called my friends. Today, there are only three, but I'm glad to have those three. If you have three people you can really call your friends, then you truly have it made." "I'm not perfect, I don't give a fuck. You're not perfect, and I STILL don't give a fuck." "I have a great life. I get to sleep till noon. I get to scream and yell and run around and drive around in a bus and have people talk to me about myself. Wow!" "It doesn't have to be this constant tragedy. We were doin' this VH1 Behind the Music thing and they tend to focus on the tragic elements of an artist's career. I was like 'Dude, there's no tragedy here!" -Buffalo Beat, September 9th-15th, '99 "We may not be the coolest band in the world, but we're the most fucking played band!" A rooftop concert at the Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills when they were awarded for their 1 millionth radio airplay on Tuesday November 16th, '99 "I saw an empty prescription bottle of mine for sale on E-Bay... It's not even a glamorous drug, it's something I take for acid indigestion!" -The Buffalo News Gusto Section, November 26 '99 " I really believe that women have much easier access to their souls than men do. Because as men we're taught to wear masks, to drown out our emotions in competition and making money. Now women are being forced to do that too. But I admire their capacity to bear their spirituality so much more deeply than men." -Guitar World, February '00 "I honestly believe that, as much as I ove punk rock, it can be a vary limited form of musical expression." -Guitar World, February '00 "Punk's not dead, it's just at K-Mart." "Look at them. Most critics get 75 bucks for an album review. I'd give them 100 bucks if they'd shut up and wouldn't write about us at all." -Circus, September '99 "You've got to surround yourself with people that are better than you...that way you can grow." "Whenever I get upset, I remember it takes 42 muscles to frown and only 4 to stick up your middle finger." "We wanna go out and play on our on because when you're an opening band, people throw things at you. I don't mind when somebody who loves my band throws a shoe at me, ya know, because it's with love..." "With every decision you make in your life, you're going to have some regrets about which way it goes. You just have to choose which set of regrets you can live with the best, and try to minimize the amount or regrets you have. -Guitar World, May '96 "You just have to play your guitar for the love of playing it, you know, and let it lead you instead of trying to lead it into something." |
| "I Find myself being exactly who I am at the moment when I pick up a guitar. It's kind of comforting, because I can never sellout. I'm not talented to contrive something like that." -Request, April '96 "There are so many ways to derive power in music other than with a wall of screaming Marshalls." "Everybody's subdivided into their little, teeny groups, and it's so weird, you know, because...everybody's got these blinders on." "You can only stay within your little niche, you know...and, uh, sometimes you gotta poke your head up and look around." "They [Mike & Robby] know I'm outta my mind. I'm the most neurotic...I make Woody Allen look like Clint Eastwood." "The original punk spirit of individuality has really become miss-marketed." "What moved me most about the film was how it presented a metaphor of the defenses we develop to protect ourselves and how taking a leap or risk is so important to really live...to really be alive." -Referring to "City of Angles" "Those songs weren't written to be hits; they were honest statements. When they became hits, it just validated the real feelings behind them." -Referring to "Iris" & "Name" "We just wanted to make a living doing what we were doing. We'd always done it on our own terms, then we had this hit, and it was really cool. We had been a band long enough, where I think the slow rise was a good thing. We were mature enough to deal with a lot of the garbage that came our way." "When we first started out, we were like Hanson." "People who have nothing to say, speak the loudest." "We had a chance to open for the Ramones, but I screwed that up, so the guys were really pissed at me." "My feeling has always been that inspiration is only a spark, which you then have to follow. And it genreally lasts for only a moment. You get that spark, but then it requires work to build a fire." |
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