Stephen Malkmus Quotes

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.

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

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.

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.

You can change the world, but if no one's listening, it doesn't matter.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I've been getting plenty off my chest. Sometimes I get too much off my chest and I regret it.

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

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.

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.

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

We care if people like what we did. If you're just making records for yourself, why put them out and do all these interviews and do touring? I'm a huge music fan, and this is what I do with my artistic time. It's all I really do, except hang out with my family. I value human relationships, and it's a way for me to interact with the world and feel like I'm part of something.

I'm just kind of a hippie. Age is not that relevant to the music.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

It's sort of irritating now - people always ask me, "You're a dad, and how's fatherhood?" If Bob Dylan or Neil Young had a kid, it didn't seem like it made them a different person. It didn't make you old right away.

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.

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

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

Berlin is just an affordable European city that's supposed to be cool. There's nothing too deep about it.

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

I still hate [the Eagles]…. There’s levels of evil in it to me.

Something taken off the page can sound great, I guess. Usually it doesn't. It seems like lately Pitchfork is trying to champion lyric writers more.

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.

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."

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

I do play soccer, but it's exhausting in a way.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[As a frontman ] I'm going to wear leather pants and get blowjobs in the studio. That would be nice. They are definitely not cool, but I like them. I don't listen to them, but I like them when I hear them on the radio, normally.

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

I really do think everybody can sing.

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

I'd like to ghost-write Liz Phair's novel. But I don't really know about that. It seems like a dignified thing to segue into as I approach the other side of 45. My hands are just full right now. There's the potential to try to write some kind of biography of Pavement - sort of a cryptic, nonfiction/fiction blowout. The story's never been told well. But that's a lot of inward-gazing that I'm not sure I want to do. I like to look out.