Nancy Sinatra Quotes

There are certain topics songwriters stay away from because it's hard to go there. I didn't sit down and go, 'I want to write something about my dad now.'

Dad is my best mate and I can tell Mum absolutely anything. I really appreciate Mum and Dad. Why are we so close? Young parents, I think. The rock business keeps their minds young.

I've always adored my father's music, but ever since I'd started singing, whether it was while I was still a student at the University of Massachusetts or professionally, I avoided Dad's material.

I never thought about the relationship of my mother, my family, to the content of my work.

Either you write songs or you don't. And if you do write songs like I do, I think there's a natural desire to want to make records.

When you have children, your perspective on the parent-child relationship alters.

I used to sing songs and write with my uncle, Bill Owens.

After Mad Season, I started writing my own music for Pearl Jam and brought it in. 'Given To Fly' came out of that, and so did 'Faithful' - those were on 'Yield,' which came after Mad Season.

My dad's a professor of medicine; my mum was a nurse. My little sister is going into healthcare. My older sister is a nurse; my brother's in finance - I'm the runt of the litter.

I had my whole life to write a bunch of crappy songs and then play them in front of people and think, 'All right, that one out of these seven is really good; it's a keeper.' But on this second album, to be honest, I probably wrote about 50 songs where I was just trying to write a hit.

My mom is very calm and quiet, so I think I got that from her. Because my dad is passionate and loud... It was always interesting, and I really enjoyed that my parents always included us in their lives.

Everybody thinks that I would go to Miley and my dad for advice, and I get that they're very successful and very big in the music industry, but I look at them as my sister and my dad.

When you think about the industry, you think about people competing. You don't think about people getting together like, 'Let's do a record. Why not?' Especially R&B.

Every riff had to be perfect and heavy, collectively what we wanted it to be. If there was one person in the room who went, 'Heh, I don't think it is there yet, guys,' we'd scrap the whole song. I think that took a little bit of songwriting maturity for us.

When I was a teenager I didn't really care about music especially with my sister being so successful, I was able to experience it through her.

Of course, my sister and my dad, I respect as musicians and look up to them, but people kind of forget that they're my family, so my first reaction isn't always, 'Let me see what my dad and Miley think about this record.'

I thought it would be fun to write a song where a bunch of my favorite guitarists contributed, so I started 'Valley of Fire.'

The questions about my father are inevitable, regardless of the characters I create or the subject matter.

My grandmother and my mother raised me, but my dad made a conscious effort to be in my life - every weekend he would take me out.

My father was a songwriter and he had a studio, and I was always surrounded by musicians and people creating music. I think I just always believed that that was a normal job, and people waking up at lunchtime and working until late at night, that to me always just was quite a normal job.

Growing up, dad coached my footy and cricket teams, but that's all he could do for me.

As a songwriter, I've always loved to tell stories. But in my band, it was always about what would make sense for a band to put out.

Any musician - I would say 99% of musicians - needs some help along the way. Most people, even if they're self-produced, have someone else mix it, or they'll have someone else master the record. Inevitably, it's like somebody else's personality being put into your art.

It's not like I'm writing full songs or full parts and setting it aside for Slash because, generally, I like him to make the first move and hear where he's coming from and what his concepts are, and then I build from there.

Getting a beginner publishing deal really helped me gain the skills. I just kept writing and writing. You just take everything out of life and turn it into an idea or a melody or a song and find the best writers you can to write with that fit you and know what you want to do.