Stephen Malkmus Quotations

We were delighted to have Nigel as a producer. The only problem is that Nigel is so famous that he seems to dominate most interviews without being there.

The lyrics are different from Nick Cave songs and lyrics. His songs are very narrative.

I'm not sure if you can blame everything on the American way of life, but the United States are big. So, if you have a lot of people there, the percentage of stupid people is bound to be higher.

A good voice isn't so important. It's more important to sound really unique.

I like that band Get Hustle. They're cool live. I haven't heard their records, though.

I think the focus of the media changes. At the moment the more electronic stuff like trip-hop was the flavor of the month, just a little while ago. It all depends on the angle, from which point of view you see it.

We're not on a desperate mission to write chart compatible stuff.

But, then again, I wouldn't call myself an indie-rock supporter even if there are some really good bands out there and there will always be some real good new bands.

We're probably a couple of freaks who've created their own little universe, are living in our own little world and that's the only place where we can survive.

Almost every band has somebody who's the main songwriter and who has a vision, a very clear idea of how a song should be.

I don't even think my voice is really good.

If a voice is just too nice, without an edge, it kinda all flows by. You forget it. You don't listen to the lyrics.

I guess the majority of people who want to ban certain musicians are the ones who are so proud of everything America stands for.

I never decided to start singing, to be a singer.

I'm more into describing a scenario and I move around in that scenario.

There's no point that an album should sound like a watered down version of another album.

Well, yeah, I sang to some songs on the radio or in the shower.

What producers did was mostly recording in the studio, so it never changed our sound just that much.

If you want to be negative about the whole thing you can say all guitar bands after the Beatles were just a waste of time because the Beatles were the best. I think it's far better to give new records a try.

Lou Reed is something like a personal favorite of mine, but you could always put me into that drawer of singers who can't really sing, who speak their songs.

We're realistic about knowing that we're not out to hit the mainstream, ... We're trying to make great music for the time, but not to make timeless music. You just try to make something special.

We just wanted to make something that we thought was beautiful-sounding and special, ... but how do you go about doing that? I don't know. But as far as sound goes, I don't worry about that. It takes care of itself.

Primarily I was doing the music here alone in the house, anyway, with the drummer. He helped with the engineering and plays on almost every song.

One day I'm going to write a straight-ahead story. I really want to, but I can't at the moment. I'm not very good at it right now.

Act like you deserve to win, trade up for a thicker skin.

CRCR ... goodbye to the rock 'n' roll era.

In a way, we're the third generation of American rock music. It all came from the black rhythm and blues and then developed from there.

I'm not against making a living, ... I get to do art and people say I'm great, occasionally.

You don't realize that when you're young, and you're surprised there's a lot of people at your gig - you just think it's general British-press hype.

When I was in high school, I was a late bloomer. And just like all those supermodels who said they were gawky and no one liked them, that was me - metaphorically. And so I was ready to rise like a phoenix in later times.

What I love about music, when you can look at something and be like, "Wow, what's this all about?" You can't really picture what these people look like - is it one guy, or a band making music in a garage?

We [ Paverment] were definitely unafraid of playing wrong notes and singing wrong things. We could be fearlessly bad!

If you have no shame, and it's your goal to get people into bed, how much higher could your success rate possibly be?

Men are men and women are women, but the men are dumber than the women, usually.

I've wanted to not play as much. I would like to just sing now. Even though I don't think I'm a great singer, I wouldn't mind just - not being a frontman, per se, but singing and not playing.

That's why you go to a nice studio. You can get a magic take. You don't really have to do anything to it.

It's hard to think back. I didn't even know I was going to do it, make actual records. But I was always making up songs, once I figured out that you could do it. I think it's pretty much the same, but there's less urge to get it moving out there. There was a time when it seemed like it was really super important to the audience and now it's just medium-important for people to like us. But that's okay.

I did some writing. I was just taking the kids to school. I did a couple things and we did some tours. It was a lot of downtime.

The best I do, if I'm just playing around and riffing in a fantasy world, and then I'll write something down. Hopefully I write it down.

If you'd rather learn how to ride a horse or something, I would say do that. That'll keep you out of trouble. You would think a band would get you in trouble, but I think it's the opposite.

Most people want to be seen or heard. You want to shine. That's my way of shining.

I think it's just entertainment for people that are interested in the form. To sing along to and be psyched by.

When I see four young kids in a band, I think, That looks really fun, no matter how shitty they are. You develop your own thing, and get excited about your band name. It's all so harmless.

Traditionally, when we lived here [in Portland], we have a record player in the living room, and there's lots of stuff playing, all different kinds of music. I don't listen to any of those Internet radio things. I have iTunes on my thing, but I've never bought a single thing on it. Except for "Call Me Maybe," for the kids or whatever. Carly Rae Jepsen.

I'm not dying for everyone to hear everything we do. Forty minutes every two years is sensible.

I feel the most natural thing is for music to come that way because it's sort of like poetry. Though I do think with poets that I like, like Charles Olson or Ezra Pound, they were rewriting constantly, until the poem becomes a diamond.But with music I don't really feel that way.

The word "down," is very musical. It just always comes.

It's normally in the morning, just playing around. And I'm not saying everything I make is great, but that's what I do. I can't even remember how I wrote stuff.

With some songs, I have written narratives or I've tried to carry it through, but generally the things that were more genius, as far as I was concerned, were not that.

The narrative songs were well-written, like an article in The New Yorker. They're nice and pat. They're more like I'm just showing I can do that when I write a song like that. It's not my true calling.

With lyrics for me, it's usually musically-based. It's not really poetry- or writer-based. It's rock-based. It doesn't mean that I'm aping rock lyrics, but I'm writing from a music standpoint. I'm thinking more of music heroes, if they're in my mind. Not William Blake or John Ashbury. Sometimes maybe I thought of him a little bit. Or Wallace Stevens. I don't even really fully understand either of them.

I'm better when I'm an autodidact and things just come. Or you're just blessed. I'm not bragging or anything, it just comes to you.

Lyrics are back, maybe. It seems like there was a bit of an attitude that lyrics are not important.

So much of rock lyrics is just a mirror of real feeling. It doesn't feel dangerous to me. They just feel like "rock lyrics."

In the early '90s, it felt like there was space - there was like an empty feel. There was nobody really doing this. Maybe the Pixies were, a little bit. Their lyrics were also disjointed, more psychosexual or something. That's part of youth, too, maybe, that you just feel like you're doing something different.

I just imagine that every song in and of itself is great, but when you add them all up, it's too much of me maybe.

Basically, no one else gives me any opinions on lyrics. I don't ask for them. If they did, I would listen.

Оur music, it's an acquired taste. It's almost cult, even at our level. It can mean nothing to somebody and it can mean everything to somebody else.

My wife says that I changed people's lives or ways of thinking and that I should always be proud and grateful. If I'm dismissive of what we do sometimes, a little bit, she's like, "I was a fan, you changed my life," or whatever. That's what she says.

If there can be some paradigm shift thing that you can be part of, that's cool.

Some people, they've had a lot of fun, even if it was dumb fun and a shitty body of work.

Family is the best. I can honestly say, it's a gift that is beyond making art. I didn't know that when I got into it.

When a band means a lot to you, you build the fantasy more than the reality. Always.

But we're still rehearsing and planning to make a new album next year. We have some really good new songs that we've already been playing on that last tour that we just finished.

I'm not dying for things to say.

There's probably a certain confidence in your voice, or something, that is validated. You know what I mean? I'm just imagining if people didn't already say that you were cool, that you'd [have] more doubt in what you're doing. That's not so conscious, but that's part of my cosmology now.

What we're doing now, it's usually more based on records that I've bought or a projection of what I can do well now and the inner dynamics of playing with the people I'm playing with, Janet Weiss and Joanna Bolme, what we come up with. What works for us doesn't, like, have that much relation to the past.

Every song has a different genesis, or feeling. Usually the lyrics, I don't really know what it's all about, I just kinda do it. I mean, there's a combination of, like you're saying, that kind of lyrics about commitment or vaguely relationship lyrics mixed with jokey 90s Beck-style non-sequiturs and stuff.

I don't want to be in Mötley Crüe or something.

Well, you know, it's a younger person, and it was maybe an effort to be a little more sincere and adult about the lyrics occasionally, which is a good thing. It's nice that it's not too self-conscious like some of our lyrics could be.

I hated it so much as a child. I just didn't like it when punk bands went metal, it really bothered me. It was happening left and right in the 1980s. It started I think with D.C. bands - G.I., Soul Side, they went metal. Right at that time, R.E.M. was coming out, these more kinda feminine bands, and I was more drawn to that than to go metal. And you remember MTV, with the bad metal. But even Metallica, it just wasn't my direction.

If someone's really busy listening to other CDs, and worried about what's new and what's truly relevant for discourse now, maybe it isn't that interesting. To me it is, because I'm tuned into that and that's what I like, so it's interesting to me. It's all I can do.

I would just imagine there's a criticism for just about everything, if you want to take something down. No one's invincible. The Jicks are a work in progress and we don't think everything we do is the bee's knees or something, we're just trying our best to get turned on by what we're doing.

George Oppen wasn't a larger than life personality, but I'm not either. And he lived a long time, so he was happy. Going down in flames is fine, too.

My wife is a big fan of George Oppen and I got into him. I could have a career like his. It's not an alpha male situation, George Oppen. It's quiet. It's poetry.He just lived a life of an intellectual poet.

Obviously songs and musicians mean a lot to people.

Things tends to often [consolidate] like Disney. It's the same with music. There's Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young and Patti Smith. There's these three people that everyone seems to agree on. No matter what they like, they seem to like those three.

I know the world doesn't need maybe another of [a particular type of song] - the same thing again - but you can't help yourself. And some people like it, but you kind of know in your heart that it's a lesser version of what you've done before. But maybe it has a good tempo, or it feels fresh, but it's still not.

I don't know if you look back on your life and just see successes, but probably the first things that pop up are the regrets.

I want to do some different kind of songs, but say I want to do riffs, but I don't come up with any riffs that I really think are great. Then I can't do a riff album. I'm more of a song, melody person.

When I was a kid I really liked the guitarist of The Doors [Robby Krieger]. He plays blues, but he plays a lot of melodic things. He plays scales that are kind of unusual, and some bent notes.

You know, it's people's lives, so as you get a little older, your own life narrative, I guess, invades a little more. It's not like we're traveling in separate buses to each show. It's a labor of love, so we just do it because we like it. Maybe someone's gonna move, or not want to go on a tour for some reason - that could happen, I guess.

I thought The Doors were the greatest band for a while.

I like visual imagery in my head.

I like a narrative, even if it's fractured, or kind of psychedelic. But my favorite thing is if I hear words and I close my eyes and the connotations or the image I get in my head, combine with the sound of them - sometimes phonetics. I'm just stringing those together.

Maybe I don't have the patience to make a virtue of necessity - the patience to carry something all the way through, and to actually say something. Lately, the songs are more jagged and they don't really lend themselves to that. I just take it one bit at a time.

Usually [the lyrics] go from one word to the next word - there's no finish line. The music was that way, too.

I'm thinking, I'm singing like Ozzy Osbourne, but I don't sound like him enough, ever.

I don't really know where the songs are coming from often. Many of the best things I made up were just off the top of my head.

I didn't really like confessional poetry or things. They seemed sort of dated to me, or just corny.

Yeah, on the records, the guitars are made melodic, and I try to make it memorable. There's not much just wanking, to be honest - it's mostly melodic parts. I try not to play too many notes. It's just more instrumental music. It's a totally valid criticism if you don't like that kind of thing. It also is maybe a little anachronistic or unnecessary in a certain way.

The earlier stuff is more like "this is happening to me," but now there are more songs that are accusatory or something, or more declaratory. I don't know where that voice comes from, like, "I've been down the road, we've been there and done that." That's sort of like a tougher style, or a less vulnerable style.

You know, the songs that are self-conscious or jerky, they are that way, but the other ones aren't, so that's a good thing. Some of the songs are Beck-jokey, but the others, they have heart in them.

Don't go to the same studio twice, or work with the same engineer twice.

Like the song "Stereo", to me that's like, kind of hip-hop in that slacker way. There's some slackerisms mixed in with that stuff, but it wasn't really conscious, I guess. When things would get more typical rock'n'roll that was my fallback to go to those kind of lyrics instead of the alternatives.

There's no reason to stop. Who knows what's around the bend? To participate, meet new people. It's mostly other musicians and people like you, or anybody I meet who's in this, that keeps me going.

I've lost my writing skills since college. I couldn't write a book. It would take a long time.

Besides, going on tour and playing songs and arranging things, going to practice, it's all I know to be productive.

There's always a chance, a goal to make something different and get it right, finally.

It's just a compulsion to create something new and stay busy. I don't know how to do anything else. It was never exactly right. Those records came out in spite of their flaws. And because of their flaws they were good.