'Hedwig' was pretty much all the things I wanted to do that other people said I probably shouldn't do: drag, punk rock, stand-up comedy... You know, combine them all in a thing that's supremely uncommercial from the objective point of view.
I'm not a manufactured artist. Nobody taught me how to be a proper artist.
So many actors and musicians seem to be only interested in what's expected of them, and they join the dots accordingly. I don't fit into any narrow categories as an actor or a singer.
I'm fascinated by musicians who don't completely understand their territory; that's when you do your best work.
'Painting like a child' isn't a negative for me... it's something only great artists can really achieve. The childlike quality of some of Picasso's drawings is precisely what makes them so masterful and extraordinary; the ability to express complete visions, feelings and portraits through a continuous line.
I think there's a huge pivot in popular music, and just in culture in general, towards art that is vulnerable and emotionally honest.
Even when I'm in quite a happy state of mind, I like writing really sad songs. I think a lot of people do.
I think have my own style; no one has ever tried playback singing before. I might release a punk rock song that perhaps other won't appreciate, but I like doing my own thing. I make music for my own satisfaction, not for money or fame.
I feel so much more comfortable when I'm working on material which makes other people scratch their heads and ask, 'You're going to make a musical out of that?'
We're more into expressing ourselves than making radio hits.
I'm not necessarily a happy singer. That's not who I am as an artist.
It's quite a dangerous career move to go wilfully on making films that may not find a distributor.
I have my own thing that I do really well, but it's not singing. It's more of a screaming-type thing.
I was ready to get out of the box and play something a little different than what everybody has seen.
'Love Tattoo' I recorded without a record company. I'd gotten turned down by the record companies - they said they didn't get me, which is fine, I suppose.
Live shows have been going on for so long, can you really do something that's never been done before?
I thought I'd be wasting my time to go to commercial record companies and make demos for them, because don't forget, I was doing what I was doing and nobody understood what I was doing.
What I feel I am doing now is giving to the people exactly what they paid for but never actually heard before.
My music was never considered cool, but I've always felt that connection with the audience.
People who take risks like Amy Winehouse and Norah Jones take a second to catch on, but eventually they do because they're different and honest in a musical landscape that's not always like that.
For me, I always have looked at 'indie' as a term of 'independence.' Never associated a sonic gesture with that in the same way that pop music has always meant 'popular' to me; you know, it didn't define a sound.
I don't really have studios. I wander around around people's attics, out in fields, in cellars, anyplace I find that invites me.
I think the music I've created is quite odd, and people are going to start talking about that.
I write about things and put things into my albums that I don't talk to people about. I don't hold back or sugarcoat anything.
Certainly there is, for the American Negro artist who can escape the restrictions the more advanced among his own group would put upon him, a great field of unused material ready for his art.
