Ryan Adams Quotes
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The process of making music is more interesting to me than the end result. If I was a cook, I'd be more interested in cooking food than eating food.
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I like things that reach a little further and are a little more abstract, but I don't think that's what I do naturally well. How I write naturally is probably what's furthest from me, and the most removed from what I understand.
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You can imagine several scenes from Star Wars? The way they looked? For me, that's how music is. Sometimes I'll be developing riffs for songs, just while I'm sitting around and not playing.
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You could eat sushi off my bookshelf. My cleaning regime is like a battleground. I'm Genghis Khan and my cleaning products are my Mongolian army and I take no prisoners. The rest of my life is an experiment in chaos so I like to keep my flat neat.
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I'm never argumentative for the sake of being argumentative, I don't think. And more than ever, I've had to be willing to fight just to get records released, or just to be able to walk away with a little bit of self-respect and pride.
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I think that music, or at least the kind of music that I make, benefits greatly from improvisation.
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To make a song is a gift, and once it's done it keeps evolving and changing and becomes a tool to interact with other people. It's like a conversation.
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The good thing about playing the guitar: You can take on different kinds of music. I'm always doing something different from the last thing I did because I have the shortest attention span on earth.
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I'm not the cool thing, and I'm not going to be the cool thing for a really long time, and it isn't like I'm not the cool thing and I sell 3,000,000 records every time. I'm not the cool thing, and I barely sell 150,000 records, if that, ever. So I'm obviously working really hard to sustain myself. I'm actually a target to be dropped, because that's just not enough records for a big company.
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Is it possible to love someone too much? You bet.
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I always have to remember that I am the narrator, but it doesn't have to be about me. A lot of songwriting is about trying to use what part of me is valid in telling the story. I don't want to overcook it, you know? Sometimes it seems that's really where the work is.
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Collaboration has become really integral to my process. I play music so that I can spend time with my friends and communicate in that way. I experience so much joy in that process, because, you know, it's those times of getting together and playing music and all that comes with it that are the best for me.
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I want to make sure I'm with a girl that's a good kisser, and that when I wake up, I have coffee and a cigarette. That's all I really want out of life. That, and world domination.
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On Heartbreaker, I had to sing those songs. I drank the way I did those songs. I ate the way I did those songs. I communicated the way I did those songs.
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Sometimes an idea from six years ago will come to me out of the blue. And maybe I haven't even seen the lyrics I wrote down, but I'll just have this physical memory of having written it, and in my mind I can see the piece of paper, and the words I wrote down, and then by muscle memory, I'll remember the chords that go along with it.
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I should've died a hundred thousand times,Teetering stoned off the side of a building.Nobody loved me and nobody even triedYou can't hang on to something that won't stop moving.Singing and dancing to them nighttime songs.
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I was never much of a bass player.
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It's hard to be bipolar and bicoastal at the same time.
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While you can fill every heart as your own full of laughter loud as gold and passion quick as silver.
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I do craft songs, that this is designed. It's almost like the song was written to produce this desired effect. And it probably really works for somebody. It's maybe somebody's favorite tune, and it's really hard to come down on that, even if I feel a little embarrassed for it. Because some songs are written like a commercial, and that can be a little strange.
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I think I've been incredibly raw my whole career. A lot of people spend a lot of time trying to look cool and spend time being guarded and putting up walls. I just never had the time. It seems more honest to say, 'Hey, this is who I am.'
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For me, a record is valid when I actually hold the vinyl. Like, I've worked on the art for a while and I see the vinyl and I go "Ooh, it's an actual LP. How cool is that?" That's very sacred to me. You can't take that back, you know?
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When You're young, you get sad, and you get high.
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What I love most in life happens to be the very thing that I do day-to-day, as my work. What would be my hobby, you know, happens to be my actual job. So I'm very lucky. Even if I didn't want to do as much work as I do, I'd still feel compelled to, because I so longed to be a full-time artist, and since I've been given that opportunity, I'd never want to let down the gift.
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I quit drinking every night, at 1:30 A.M.
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While the things I do kill me, they just tell me to relax
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Bad nights lead to better days
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It's hard to view myself sometimes as even in the same league as other musicians, mainly because there's so much music before me. I feel overinformed by different styles and different possibilities.
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Maybe I am a jerk sometimes. Maybe I'm not. I think most people are kind of a jerk once in a while.
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A lot of my songs, they're like puzzle pieces, and there's just one way to put them together. You could, if you needed to, get the scissors out and cut up things to make them work. But I don't want to do that.
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