Doug Stanhope Quotes

I had no desire to be famous; I just wanted to make the greatest music ever made. I didn't want anyone to know who I was.

With Whitesnake it would have been inappropriate for me to have played Deep Purple songs, although I did at the beginning because I didn't have enough Whitesnake songs.

Greatest hits is easy because one has nothing to do - except that we both, Roger and I, felt that new songs should be there because I've been away for awhile.

It's a trip to have a Greatest Hits record. It's a trip.

Albert King wasn't my brother in blood, but he sure was my brother in Blues

When people asked to buy my work I always said no. I'd had this rather rarefied idea that I didn't want money going through my head while I was making work. But after the car crash I realized that none of my work was owned by anyone. After that, I grew up a bit.

The idea of content in art is today merely a hindrance, a nuisance, a subtle or not so subtle philistinism.

Clearly the hardest thing for the working artist is to create his own conception and follow it, unafraid of the strictures it imposes, however rigid these may be... I see it as the clearest evidence of genius when an artist follows his conception, his idea, his principle, so unswervingly that he has this truth of his constantly in his control, never letting go of it even for the sake of his own enjoyment of his work.

I am nervous that the craft of songwriting is taking a nose dive...And since I'm a songwriter and I connect with an interpretative, you know, interpretation of a song, I miss it. I just miss it.

The truth of country music, the real stuff, will prevail ..... generation after generation.

Entertainment was transportation. You were supposed to take somebody out of their seat and bring them back in. You’re not supposed to impose your values or your supposed knowledge to manipulate or control people. That was not your job. You were not supposed to use the bully pulpit of Hollywood to pound people with ideas. You’re there to entertain.

Every work of art (unless it is a psuedo-intellectualist work, a work already comprised in some ideology that it merely illustrates, as with Brecht) is outside ideology, is not reducible to ideology. Ideology circumscribes without penetrating it. The absence of ideology in a work does not mean an absence of ideas; on the contrary it fertilizes them.

The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue. . . . There is a perpetual interference with personal liberty over there that would not be tolerated in England for a week.

I started doing some more specific research on Wales in that period because I like the idea of being authentic to the territory, and with that came the knowledge that there was this great rebellion that was happening with the Marcher barons and conflict with the king. A lot of it wasn't documented by the English.

I like the idea of being sort of withdrawn and mysterious, and what can be more mysterious that someone wearing a trash bag, like a dark trash bag, with eye holes that say "nihilism?" You'd be curious. What's underneath that? Is it perfect? Or is it broken?

There's nothing as perfect as the initial idea. And the only reason I write and direct is to protect the writing, because that's what's most precious.

When we're putting out records that people are responding to, it's amazing. And it's obviously what we shoot for every time. It's a tricky balancing act. But as long as it's sort of a righteous idea, then you're good to go.

I simply asked if I could have a go at adapting a screenplay. But I did not want any money, in case I failed because I did not want a script out there with my name on it that might be completely dysfunctional.

I never write. Never! I do not even remember if I can write … This is a true freestyle in general. I put a beat, I said some stuff, I retain ideas, I do it again, with a particular intonation, I test, and especially I record live.

it's more interesting for me to stick things out anonymously. You get more of an honest reaction to what you've done.

To express himself well, the artist should be hidden. The trouble is that if an artist knows he has genius, he's done for. The only salvation is to work like a labourer, and not have delusions of grandeur.

The idea that music is art has been something we advocated for years. And yet it doesn't receive the same treatment as art in the sense of the value of what it is, especially nowadays when it's been devalued and diminished to almost the point that it has to be given away for free.

Before I start carving the idea must be almost complete. I say 'almost' because the really important thing seems to be the sculptor's ability to let his intuition guide him over the gap between conception and realization without compromising the integrity of the original idea; the point being that the material has vitality - it resists and makes demands.

On the one hand, I have wanted to supply documentation on myself by including material relevant to my emotions and ideas in my youth; and, on the other, not to let myself down by publishing inferior material. My poetry comes under the latter head. My only advice to the reader is to skip any verse that he sees coming.

We've tried as hard as we can into keep the ideas intact in the hail storm that is Hollywood, so, whether he is or not, I'm personally proud of what I've been able to jam down their throats.