Artist Burnout Quotes

What did winning a Grammy do for me? It made me want to get rid of my Grammy, pack it away, and never see it again. It made me not want to speak to anyone who wanted to speak about my Grammy.

At the end of OK Computer we were playing big, big arenas and it wasn't right. You can do those things occasionally but at the time it didn't feel right.

I learned from Jimi Hendrix. They all wanted him to do the tricks, and at the end of his career, he just wanted to play. I lived longer than he did, and I can see how those pressures can really play with your head.

The years keep going by and you realize, Wow. Doing these records is such a process: going on tour for a year and a half, then you get home and you want to do other things.

Yeah, I was in the phase for the last ten years or so where every record I made I said OK, that's the last one, I don't want to record anymore, I don't want to do this any more, I don't want to have a public life.

That's kind of the weird thing about Salad Days. I had to block time off from touring and tell my management and label like no press, no nothing. Let me make an album. You guys are running me dead.

Right now I can't be sure that I will be back on stage. We have been touring for two years and that is way too much.

It's kind of like I'm Phil Spector, and I'm forcing a young girl to make pop music and perform exhaustively. Except, instead of it being someone else, that girl is also me.

I've seen too many people who have been artists for a long time, on that cycle of record-promote-tour, and you look up and 10 years of your life is gone. I didn't want that to happen to me.

I believe that, in our industry, overexposure tends to create problems for artists, so fortunately, I have been exposed but not overexposed.

I was tired. I peaked. I left when I was on top. One year, I did 280 concerts.

I'm never gonna go into a studio and work for a whole year non-stop. Just every day on my own in the studio working, it's just too damn hard.

I don't have any desire to go back into the studio, and I certainly don't have any desire to go back on the road.

Nine Inch Nails is like building an army to go conquer. We build it, then we play, and we have to play so much to validate building it, financially. It leads to getting burn-out because a tour that would be fun if it lasted three weeks has to last 15 weeks.

The album 'Physicist,' I erased all the work that I had done halfway through. I think that's probably why that contributed to that album being sort of sub-par for me, just because by the time I had to go back and do it, I was just over it.

It's getting harder and harder to feel inspired to spend six months on a record.

Many artists give up after a while.

The day I run out of ideas is the day I stop making records.

Being a musician, especially at the major label where you work for so long, it becomes a cycle. Write a record, make a record, tour. It's just this cycle, and I don't think there's any life built into it with time to assimilate what's going on in front of you and what's going on in your head.

You can't talk about life without talking about politics. You have to have both. If you're just a political person, you're going to burn out. If you, as an artist, are just focused inward, you're going to eventually be irrelevant.

I had fans, and the industry and everybody saying, 'Keep the Righteous Brothers going; keep the music alive,' and I really didn't want to do that. I had sung with a couple of guys who would supposedly be really good Bobby Hatfields, and I thought, 'Oh geez, it's really anti-climatic.'

I finished touring the last record and I started recording new .I never really left the bubble, which is I think a good thing. I was just very focused. Maybe I should have taken a break or something, and not done such a long push.

I call it fan fatigue. I went to see Bob Dylan last year, who I think is absolutely incredible, but he suffers from his audience.

That's what I tend to do - get into a band, and then it gets busy… and you want to get away from it all again. That's what happened with the Moodies and Wings.

After 'Return Of The Bumpasaurus' in '96, I just got away from music for, like, a year. Literally, I think I produced two songs in a year. I was totally kicking it, running around.