David Berman Quotes

I think too many artists from my era tend to just stamp out a record.

I've never worried about how a new release will be received. I simply try to do the best I can and leave the rest to the gods. The music industry in those terms is something I loathe and detest. It conjures up images of a gigantic factory spewing out parts of the machine.

I know there are some labels that put out music for art's sake, but I don't know which ones.

I don't go in the studio to make music that won't matter. I go in every night to try to make a point and make the best music that I can make.

You want to sell records, but if you want to call yourself an artist, your job is how you express yourself.

I'm not making music to get played in a club.

The fans are always wanting new music, and with as much as I love to write, I might as well give them the music while I've got it.

I think what's more important to The Prodigy is that, whatever number your album goes in at, or the single, or however many plays it gets, or doesn't get, or awards you get, or don't get; our reward, as a band, is to write the best album we can and then go to Download festival and rip it to pieces.

It's not about me, it's about the music. I don't do this because I want to be a star. I don't do this because I want to make a lot of money.

I've never been in this business to make money. I've always been in it to make good music.

Music is a spiritual expression of what's in your heart. Music as a way of getting rich is a pretty new thing, and I often wonder if the mega-bucks glitzy atmosphere is making the quality of music suffer. You have to work really hard to get around that and remember why you're in it in the first place: because you have to be. It's like an addiction. You can't go a day without picking up your guitar. To me, the only commercial goals that are really valid are, 'Boy, I wish I didn't have to go to work. I wish I could do this all the time.'

As people buy less and less records, it's become more and more important for me to spend more and more on them - to lavish that much more attention on them. The Bad Seeds were always quite protective and old school, but Grinderman has opened us up to do anything and be shameless. We're not so precious about it.

Even if it's a song I know isn't gonna do that well, I'm dropping it as a piece of art, so I always want sick visuals to go with it.

At least I try to stay consistent with every album I do.

As long as the fans keep wanting to hear new records from us every few years, we'll keep making them.

People who are artists professionally are not artists because they want to be artists; they have to be artists. They're compelled to get that creativity out and to share that with others.

I want to put out as many albums as I can before I die.

I'm lucky. I've got my own studio. I can make my own music, but not many people can do that. I will always be making new music, because that's what I have to do; that's why I'm here. I will always do that.

I'm just concerned with going about my business and making the records I want to make.

If we start putting music out constantly where people don't think no more, people go crazy. We're gonna lose the love of heart, of soul. And if the world lose that, I think the world is doomed.

I guess if I'd have more of a producer attitude, maybe I'd sell more records. But I'm basically a songwriter.

I don't really take time off between records; it's a compulsion for me.

I love music, but the people in the music don't wanna work.

I think the recording industry is founded on that principle: to approximate the live experience, to approximate that thing that evaporates as it's happening, disappears as it's happening.

What's happened to the music industry, from my perspective, is a lot of great music is behind the wall that can't get through, and therefore, a lot of artists are getting discouraged.