Will Oldham Quotes

It's good when someone says, "Would you write a song for this purpose," or "would you record a song for this purpose," or "would you help me realize this song," again, for this purpose. ~ Will Oldham

I like rural areas. ~ Will Oldham

I don't usually read reviews. I usually read the interviews, just because I figure it's a good way to try to do them better if I ever have to do them again. ~ Will Oldham

I feel much more physically connected to my voice, and I like the physicality of the voice, and how the voice can physically occupy a song. ~ Will Oldham

I still make music. I still write music and I record music, I just don't trust music promotion [and] distribution right now enough to record a new set of diligently worked-upon compositions. I do trust the audience and the audiences very much. ~ Will Oldham

I want to be successful and I want people to hear the music and I want to make money at it, but if it isn't what you do, eventually it seems like that will cause you to not be able to do what you do. If you did that for a couple years, you would just become someone else, which is fine, I guess ... but I don't want to become someone else. I want to do what I enjoy and what feels right. ~ Will Oldham

Sometimes they'll have performances and invite me to be a featured soloist. I think that is what they call it in that world-"featured soloist." ~ Will Oldham

As it turns out, as an adult I can have a very unpleasant, fierce and unforgiving temper at times. But I don't think I had that when I was a kid. ~ Will Oldham

Cities are made for enemies to destroy. ~ Will Oldham

Venues are all the same, all feel the same, these generic blank spaces. I like artists like Lightning Bolt-bands that go in and kind of change things every time, play on the floor, set up in the middle of the room. They go in and they reinvent the space every time, which I feel is like the kind of thing that should just be happening. ~ Will Oldham

The ideal is to put on shows where, if you go into the same space again, you don't remember ever having been there before, because where you were was a space that only existed that one time, created by the music. ~ Will Oldham

At the same time, you don't want to be blindsided at some point because you've taken too much comfort from knowing nothing. So you try to keep a little store of practical knowledge. At a certain point you have to pretend that something is true in order to have a relationship with the world. ~ Will Oldham

I write a song to be recorded. And to some extent to be performed, but definitely more to be recorded than performed, because the recording will last longer than a performance. ~ Will Oldham

It's nice to be able to backtrack and not be embarrassed by the music you used to listen to. ~ Will Oldham

I really hate press. ~ Will Oldham

I make the songs and part of making them is singing them. But what you hear is not me. It's the song. It's through me. ~ Will Oldham

I do an opening, and then I go up to the high balcony in the back and watch the bulk of the play, but then I have to leave my seat about seven to 10 minutes before the end of that final big scene ... and it's a bummer. ~ Will Oldham

I think everybody works from a defensive position, for the most part, in the film industry. ~ Will Oldham

To sing with other people and for other people, that's when you can really learn something about your voice. You can only learn so much if you create your own boundaries all the time. But then, other people can really teach you something. You know, if you're trying to sing with them, or if someone brings a style. ~ Will Oldham

I figure it's okay to make certain rules, whether or not people despise you for it at the time. ~ Will Oldham

There are a limited number of promoters out there who care about that. You rarely meet a promoter who's like, "I want to be responsible for the best shows, I want to make sure that these are the best shows these audiences have ever seen." ~ Will Oldham

I have more respect for somebody who points at his ideal - in this case, the ideal of the pirate - and then becomes something that's more radical, more exciting, more subversive than a pirate could ever be. ~ Will Oldham

I don't like going to cities. I don't mind maybe being in a city sometimes for a few hours, but I pretty much don't like cities. I don't even like passing through them. ~ Will Oldham

As a kid you learn that there are thinkers and there are philosophers and there are theologian, and I'd hear little bits of the ideas that these people pursued or developed or created and I'd be really excited. Then I'll start to read it and I think, "Wait a minute, this is a rabbit hole. This isn't a gateway or a ticket to anything except itself." ~ Will Oldham

There's very little admirable about being a pirate. There's very little functional about a pirate. There's very little real about a pirate. ~ Will Oldham

Sometimes we need to tell ourselves that we're not going to do certain things, just in order to stay sane. ~ Will Oldham

When you think like a hermit, you forget what you know. ~ Will Oldham

I feel like, for me, reading Thomas Merton is like that. When you're a ways into it, you're five pages in, 20 pages in, 30 pages in, it seems like one of the more oxymoronic undertakings you could attempt. ~ Will Oldham

I was worried before I saw the play, thinking I don't really want to see a play about Thomas Merton. He probably wouldn't have either, ideally. Then it isn't. It's more about us and it's about our relationship to what he may or may not have thought about. It's its own thing completely. ~ Will Oldham

You're making something that won't be what it is until some unknown date in the future. All aspects of the personal disappear. ~ Will Oldham

I think that what trips up a lot of great musicians is that they become involved with too many things that aren't where their strengths lie. ~ Will Oldham

We always keep things very, very simple. We can make a respectable living playing a smaller room that somebody else couldn't, because they're spending a lot of money. If we can't get a show up and deliver with what we almost intrinsically have in our brains and our pockets, then I don't really want to do it. ~ Will Oldham

For a long time I've walked through this world with the desire, like in Rear Window, to look into other people's lives because I know that there is a way in which I am the same as so many of the strangers that I see. ~ Will Oldham

I don't think that word - the word pirate - has any real meaning. Or it's something that's had meaning imposed on it. ~ Will Oldham

There's nothing that compares to watching that final 17 to 20 minute sequence in one sitting. It fills you with a giddy energy watching that. Then, being gifted with the silence that follows ... I've never had a theatrical experience like that before, I'm sure. ~ Will Oldham

I don't like the idea of being surrounded by hidden things; people you can't see in buildings and cars. ~ Will Oldham

Whenever I see something that looks like it could be good - whether it's on vinyl, CD or cassette - if it's not too expensive, I'll take a chance. ~ Will Oldham

Frank Sinatra's never been handsome, but he's one of my favorite singers. Who needs looks when you have a voice and power? ~ Will Oldham

I need to go someplace faraway that doesn't have telephones and doesn't have a record player and doesn't have movie theaters and people walking down the street in order to not do anything. ~ Will Oldham

I have a mantra that kind of explains my feelings on this subject, which is, "The past is the present is the future." When you're recording something, you're making something that will exist in the future. ~ Will Oldham

With women, you always have to make an educated decision to figure out what they're thinking. It's not one that's necessarily sympathetic, always. Of course, we're all human beings, but the gender thing is big thing. And a great thing. ~ Will Oldham

I was once asked to pick a couple of records for an interview I was doing on Radio 2. I picked one by Will Oldham and one by Joanna Newsom. Someone on the production phoned me to say that I couldn't have either record because they were 'too alternative' and I could just pick two from their playlist. Now, personally, I think that Radio 2's listeners would dig both Joanna Newsom and Will Oldham if they heard their records, and that the fact they don't get to hear them contributes to the cultural wasteland we live in. I told them that I'd been to see Joanna Newsom in the Albert Hall a couple of weeks before and it had been sold out. How could she be 'too alternative'?
'Alternative' and 'mainstream' aren't strictly to do with whether things are popular or minority interest. They are ideological labels. Someone like Joe Pasquale would be called 'mainstream' and regularly pops up on TV, but would play the smaller end of the touring-theatre circuit. If Joanna Newsom can sell out Albert Hall, why can't she get played on Radio 2? I would agree that it's because her work is too layered, challenging and interesting. Think about that. What you get to hear about is filtered, and not filtered to get rid of useless cunts like Joe Pasquale, but of things that might enrich your life. ~ Frankie Boyle

I do not want a personal relationship with my fans. Or to do anything that encourages them to think they have one with me. They can have a personal relationship with my songs. That's fine, but they don't know me. ~ Will Oldham

My hope has always been that each record could have its own audience. Of course, it's awesome to have a cumulative audience for more than one record, but I like the idea that there could be a record that an individual might like. ~ Will Oldham

When I listen to them, they're like they were made as time capsules in the first place. You know that when you're writing the song and recording the song, you're already sending a message to the future listener, whoever and wherever and whenever that will be. ~ Will Oldham

What is normally called religion is what I would tend to call music - participating in music, listening to music, making records and singing. ~ Will Oldham

Yeah, it's hard, but it's the kind of hard that if you work hard enough at it, you can do it and it feels great, because it was so hard. So we'll continue maybe even over the next couple of years to perform that and to expand our collaborative repertoire. ~ Will Oldham

I'd like my records to reach as many people as possible, but I'm also thinking in terms of how I can keep from getting jaded or unhappy with the process. ~ Will Oldham

Lord of myself, accountable to none, but to my conscience, and my God alone. ~ John Oldham

The only thing worth stealing is a kiss from a sleeping child. ~ J. H. Oldham

Faith is an active creative force. ~ J. H. Oldham

While some no other cause for life can give, but a dull habitude to live. ~ John Oldham

Today it feels as if rock'n'roll has sort of turned in on its self, kids are 'rockin' to the same groups their parents do/did. We've seen it recently with The Stone Roses reunion shows, quite unique but is it healthy. Wasn't the 60's about rebelling against the tastes of your parents? ~ Andrew Loog Oldham

I wear a solar radiation suit. The lights we have over our artificial fields simulate real sunlight, so if I were in there for too long, I'd get a sunburn just like if I was on a beach. I guess up on the Burn (that's what we call the land) they had something called sunscreen, but then some dermatologist down here designed the solar radiation suits and said they were much more effective protection. Sometimes I want to smack him. ~ Annie Oldham

I do have issues with the fact that music is so accessible nowadays. When I was growing up, we had to find our music; we had to fight for it. But hey, you live in the age that you're born in, and you get on with it. ~ Andrew Loog Oldham

I was fifteen when I left school. And what did I get to show for my ten years in the British education system? A piece of paper which said:

John Osbourne attended Birchfield Road Secondary Modern.
Signed, Mr Oldham (Headmaster)

That was f**king it. Not a single qualification. Nothing. I had two career choices: manual labour or manual labour. ~ Ozzy Osbourne

We seem historically to be more comfortable with others who are similar to us rather than different - same ~ John Oldham

The Beatles looked like they were in show business, and that was the important thing. And the important thing for the Rolling Stones was to look as if they were not. ~ Andrew Loog Oldham

You are everything I have in this world Gracie ~ Marisa Oldham

To attempt to commit the Church to social and political programs may be a short cut . to escape from the more difficult and costly responsibility of submitting ourselves to those deeper changes of disposition and outlook which are in the end a much more powerful revolutionary force. ~ J. H. Oldham

There is a certain irony here, because many of the first werewolves to be outed in society from the 16th through the 18th centuries were actually women. Just as our American ancestors had their Salem Witch Trials, Europe had its Werewolf Trials, and a large number of the so-called "werewolves" tortured and burned at the stake were female. […] In the 17th-century werewolf trials of Estonia, women were about 150 percent more likely to be accused of lycanthropy; however, they were about 100 percent less likely to be remembered for it."

"Here's also a pronounced lack of female werewolves in popular culture. Their near absence in literature and film is explained away by various fancies: they're sterile, an aberration, or - most galling of all - they don't even exist.Their omission from popular culture does one thing very effectively: It prevents us, and men especially, from being confronted by hairy, ugly, uncontrollable women. Shapeshifting women in fantasy stories tend to transform into animals that we consider feminine, such as cats or birds, which are pretty and dainty, and occasionally slick and wicked serpents. But because the werewolf represents traits that are accepted as masculine - strength, large size, violence, and hirsutism - we tend to think of the werewolf as being naturally male. The female werewolf is disturbing because she entirely breaks the rules of femininity. ~ Julia Oldham

I wear my Pen as others do their Sword. ~ John Oldham

The great artists represent you. The great products represent you. They don't tell you who you are. But with them, you require less verbiage. ~ Andrew Loog Oldham

He turns to point the knife at Dave. Smitty opens his mouth to speak, but no words come out. Instead his eyes widen in surprise because with a clap of thunder, I blow a hole in his chest. ~ Annie Oldham

Differences were meant not to divide but to enrich. ~ J. H. Oldham

When you're young, you obviously have people you look up to. People like Andrew Oldham and Nile Rodgers inspired me then, and they inspire me now. But at some point, you start to try to be the best you can be and you're not copying anybody else. I'm just doing it in public, and my work needs to reflect that as well. ~ Johnny Marr

You have to jump into the pool before you know whether there's water in it. ~ Andrew Loog Oldham

The linesman flagged initially because he thought I was an Oldham player. Fair enough, I did have a replica shirt on - but I also have a big furry head. ~ Kevin Williams

Excellence is the Result of Caring more than others think is Wise, Risking more than others think is Safe, Dreaming more than others think is Practical, and Expecting more than others think is Possible. ~ Ronnie Oldham