Jack O'Brien Quotes

I can't tell you how freeing it is to have my own label. For the first time in my career, I have total control.

I need to find a way of retaining creative control.

Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.

I couldn't be an artist who was told what to do, what to be, what to sing.

We got full artistic integrity and autonomy over what we were doing, and that was the main important thing that kept our band alive.

I was 21. At the time, I was under the thumb of my label, and I felt like I had to do, say and act out everything they asked me to do. I was trying to please them and the public and finally I had to say, "Enough. I'm going to make a record that makes me happy and addresses all facets of being a woman. I don't care if I sell one or one million records." That's how I came to make Stripped.

Metallica lives in a little bubble. We just do our own thing. We're not part of any trends or waves or fads. We can just do our own thing, all the time. It's a great luxury. I don't think we were really appreciative of it until recently, and really understood that it is what keeps us alive. It's great to be able to have the freedom to run around and do all this crazy stuff, and at all cost, avoid making another record, just to piss our managers off.

I'm certainly not who people think I am. I always do whatever I want to do, and my films are personal to me.

I didn't come to Hollywood to be subservient to anyone else's vision.

Very few artists are as independent as I am mentally, physically, spiritually and technically. I sit in my home studio and record things by myself. I don't need to get anybody's approval or validation.

If I'm going to go out to be a solo artist, it's because I want to do something different without having to wait on someone else's schedule or hobbies or be limited by other people's prejudices. I'd be kind of stupid not to exercise that.

I never think about what others are doing. I do a film for myself, not others.

I've gotten to a point where I wouldn't direct someone else's material. It would only be something totally original.

I came to filmmaking because it's my passion. I decided I can't have it distorted or marred by someone else deciding what it should be.

I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it.

I don't like people telling me what to do, or trying to MAKE me write songs.

I feel, having the choices I had, I felt I had more control over my own medium than I did over photography.

I used to get in trouble with my old agent, because I've never been driven by fear or need or greed. I want my work to represent me as a person, so I can be quite fussy.

There's a lot of creative freedom. Acting is a whole boatload of fun, but I prefer to do it on my own terms.

Acting is a whole boatload of fun, but I prefer to do it on my own terms.

I've never been one to sit back and go, 'I'd better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don't want to lose them.'

As a self-published author, you have the choice. Embrace the power to create a book that is truly yours. Don't be a whiner or a copycat.

I do love being solo because I can have more of my own creative input to every aspect of my career.

I am in that glorious position where I can redesign and re-package my own work.

I enjoy total creative control right now. Nobody tells me to make it longer, shorter, better, sexier, more violent, whatever.