John Darnielle Quotes

I think taking too long to work on a record you sort of lose some of the feeling, so I write as fast as I can; it's just this manic phase where I'm by myself and or on tour and I write and I write. And I send them to the guys, and we start planning our studio ventures.

At times, I will get in the studio and force myself to just write an entire front-to-back record, and 'Let Me Go' is one of these.

Being on the road is a great habitat for creating new music because there's so many different experiences.

When you're an artist, you can only do your own stuff. Even if you only write for other people, you're really more focused on yourself. So while everybody's out touring, I'm working on records.

For some artists the live performance is the chicken before the egg of writing or recording of repertoire. For other artists the writing or recording of repertoire is the chicken before the egg of live performance.

My main thing is just to keep writing. I've been doing some songwriting that's for my own record, I suppose.

I knew there was something about 'Sun Medallion,' in particular, because I just had to record it the second I wrote it.

One day I'll wake up and I'll have 10 or 12 songs and think, 'Oh that sounds like it could be a record.'

My second album was written while I was on the road promoting the first record. I tried to take my personal experiences and elevate them to universal experiences, so that I wasn't writing songs about living on a tour bus or being on a TV set for the first time.

I always think I don't have any songs, I don't have anything I'm working on, and I get in the studio and realize there are 20 things I'm thinking about. It's just kind of second nature.

When we make records, it's hard to pinpoint one thing that inspires a record. It's usually a number of different things that lead to inspiration or wanting to write something down and share it with someone.

I would imagine that most of my writing is done spontaneously. I had no intention of writing, and then I'll just walk through the house, and I'll hear this melody, and I'll turn on the tape players and go back to it later on. Some days I'll get 3-5 songs a day.

I'm never happier than when I'm being creative, whether that's with Coldplay or other artists. I just love being in the studio.

You're in good spirits when you create and produce great music. All situations inspire music in different ways, man, from good situations, bad situations, depression, falling in love, falling out of love. I've been going through all those type of things.

In my off-time, I do record. Once in a while, I'll just go into the studio if there's a really good song that I have in my head and want to do. I think, as artists, you're constantly in creative motion. If I stopped writing songs, then that's a part of me that would stop in my life, and I need constant motion.

Whether I'm writing solo stuff, electronic stuff, or material for Motley, I just write to write. I come up with it and put things in different piles.

'Southern Accents,' I think that's one of my best, really. That would have been 1984, and I wrote that on the piano in the studio at home. I had a studio, and I just happened to be down there in the middle of the night. It was quite late, probably early morning, and I just started to play, and a song just started to appear.

I'm getting in the studio with everybody I've always wanted to work with. That's the amazing thing.

I'm just like anybody else: I have stuff to do in the day, whether that's writing a song or recording a song. I try to treat everything I do as just work.

The whole idea of doing an album is overwhelming sometimes. But, I get inspired when I get inspired and that's when it flows easily.

I'm constantly writing music and keeping myself busy somehow.

You don't realize how beautiful an idea is until you do it with other people. There's this really shimmery, awesome thing when you start finishing a song - where the song just starts writing itself.

I just love being in the studio, and that's kind of what I do when I'm not on the road. I'm just in the studio messing with stuff, and I love playing all the instruments.

I usually know the general emotion of a song, or the general feeling of it, and then I think I just get so excited by the act of recording. I love that process so much that I feel like if I knew exactly what I wanted I'd arrive at something too soon.

It's easy for me to write songs but hard for me to write an album; that's been my experience.