Mayer Hawthorne Quotes

Prince turned experimental music into pop music. 'When Doves Cry,' the whole 'Purple Rain' soundtrack - he was inspired by the Cocteau Twins and new wave pop and brought it into R&B when he first started, and then it became this cool, next-level, kind of hard-to-digest music. Which is what I felt 'House of Balloons' was.

I started dating JD Samson from Le Tigre, and suddenly I was listening to more up-tempo music and old dance music, like ESG and Gang of Four, and I thought, 'Wow. This is fun.'

There are definite reference points to older Depeche Mode records.

'Movement' sounded like Joy Division, but 'Power, Corruption & Lies' is the first New Order record.

I grew up listening to a lot of Kraftwerk, Gary Numan, Devo, all that stuff.

I really loved the hardcore alternative vibe Prince had on 'Dirty Mind.'

I really like Cold Cave.

There's no place for Depeche Mode and the Sisters of Mercy in the music I make with my band. If I was a fan, I wouldn't want to hear that on a Black Veil Brides record. It was important for me and for the integrity of the band not to tarnish it.

Leading into 'The Hurting,' what changed our view of music was Gary Numan.

It turns out that there's a huge community of African-American musicians whose main influence is Throbbing Gristle.

I guess you could call my music progressive, pop, rock.

I'm not an '80s fan. I'm more '70s New York pre-punk kind of thing, and I guess I grew up with '90s grunge, post-punk pop music.

The music that I make, the younger musicians are referring to it as 'stretch' music.

Hearing things like 'Wake Up' by Lora Logic, or the Raincoats' 'In Love' - that was something I wasn't prepared for. I couldn't hear anything that came before it in the music, and I didn't want to. I was absolutely in love with its out-of-nowhereness.

Bob Marley is a huge influence. I love reggae music, but I also love the purpose of the songs he writes and the style of the music - it takes your worries away and makes you feel good, and I think that's what music is about.

I don't appreciate avant-garde, electronic music. It makes me feel quite ill.

Musically, I didn't relate to Berlin. There seemed to be a lot of machine music made there - I don't think I saw a stringed instrument in two years.

I wanted to make the kind of records that I heard in the discos that I danced in at that time. Funky, electronic sounds, while the musicians in the band were more rock oriented. This I suppose created the sound we know as Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

A lot of the vocal music I've been doing recently has been quite clubby. But that's mainly because I've had more time to go to clubs, and that normally breeds that kind of influence.

I was greatly influenced by musique concrete when I was, like, 10. I was completely mesmerized by the idea that you could make music out of sounds. So that's been a constant influence on all my work.

I do love dance music. I love Daft Punk. I mean, I was a child in the '80s, so bands like the Eurythmics and just so many great '80s bands were dance bands, but they had the whole soul thing happening, too.

People like Aphex Twin, Jason Pierce, Jarvis Cocker and William Orbit are actively showing their interest in a wider field of music. Jarvis and I met on a benefit for an extraordinary man called LaMonte Young, the father of minimalism, who worked with John Cale and shared a loft with Yoko Ono.

I grew up in the eighties; that's probably why I like some of the earlier electronic from Kraftwerk to all throughout new wave and things like that.

I consider my music to be Progressive Synth Pop, which says nothing about what it sounds like, but does describe my basic approach.

The first music I ever got into was the '80s alternative bands that my brother listened to, like The Cure and The Smiths and R.E.M. and Fugazi. I can remember specifically saying The Cure was my favorite band back in second grade.