The artist himself is actually the subject in everything after, say, 1900. Eventually, art becomes so removed from the community that you have to know about the artist before you can even look at the painting, because there is a conceptual idea going on.
When I'm in a session with an artist, my job is to help execute their vision - so it's whatever story they're telling, and the news doesn't specifically affect that.
A lot of the songs on '2' are pretty personal, but even if I'm writing about something like that, I still tend to keep it pretty simple and open-ended. I like the idea of people listening to my album and it meaning something to me but maybe meaning something else to them.
Every artist and every song has an idea, and the producer's job is to capture it.
For me, Miranda has always been a much deeper character than the three-minute videos I put online.
As you can imagine, over the years I have been asked many times to discuss and explain my song "American Pie." I have never discussed the lyrics, but have admitted to the Holly reference in the opening stanzas. You will find many interpretations of my lyrics but none of them by me. You will find many “interpretations” of my lyrics but none of them by me. Isn’t this fun? Sorry to leave you all on your own like this but long ago I realized that songwriters should make their statements and move on, maintaining a dignified silence.
People should listen to my music if they just want to know me better.
There's traditionally been a large disconnection in contemporary art between the audience and the artist. Generally, audiences are looking towards what they like, and I can tell you, that's the last thing on an artist's mind.
Making social comment is an artificial place for an artist to start from. If an artist is touched by some social condition, what the artist creates will reflect that, but you can't force it.
I think I learned very quickly after I started putting out music... you just learn that people are going to take what they want and make it fit their agenda or make it fit their interpretation. And you make peace with that or you suffer forever.
When I made 'Voices of a Distant Star,' I wanted to make money from making that movie, of course, but that wasn't my major reason.
I know people are going to be like, 'why do you have so many songs with the word 'you' in it? 'Idea Of You,' 'Into You,' 'Like You,' 'You-Who'... Well, sorry, but it just works out that way.
An artist cannot be responsible for what people make of their art. An audience loathe giving up preconceived images of an artist.
I've always felt that if people just came to one of my gigs, all would be revealed.
I know a lot of people weren't expecting 'BLACKSummers'Night' to be what it was, just like a lot of people weren't expecting 'Embrya' to be what it was. People will listen to what I've been a part of and see what I've done.
I've been asking myself: 'Why put together these things - CDs, albums?' The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it's artistically viable. It's not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it's not obvious or even conscious on the artists' part.
Giorgio Morandi's paintings make me think that artists may not totally choose, or even control, their subjects or style.
Everything an artist spits is art.
I have the gift of neither the spoken nor the written word, especially if I have to say something about myself or my work. Whoever wants to know something about me -as an artist, the only notable thing- ought to look carefully at my pictures and try and see in them what I am and what I want to do.
I do remember at my very first opening in 1979 another artist coming up to me, and he was haranguing me, saying, "Did you really intend for these things to be so dumb? You just put it there and took a picture of it." He wouldn't let it go. So that's what made me think about the dumbness aspect more.
Back then, I was an acoustically-oriented artist. Honestly, 'Poetry Man' wouldn't have been my first choice.
If I can remain excited about the music that I'm giving you, then you're damn sure going to be excited about it.
Part of the joy of looking at art is getting in sync in some ways with the decision-making process that the artist used and the record that's embedded in the work.
The fact is some people really love my work, some people not so much, but at the end of the day, I don't want anybody coming out of the movie thinking about me.
If you look at someone like Joe Strummer or John Lennon, when you heard their music you knew that they wrote it and they cared about it.
