Malcolm was a firm believer in the value and importance of our heritage. He believed that we have valuable and distinct cultural traditions which need to be institutionalized so that they can be passed on to our heirs.
If they had not murdered Malcolm X, there probably never would have been a Black Panther Party.
I'm going to have to call up Spike Lee. I did a cameo for him in 'Malcolm X,' and I'm trying to get him to do my life story and the history of the Black Panther Party.
I grew up in the sixties watching B.B. King and Tito Puente and Miles Davis and Coltrane, everybody, Marvin Gaye, Jimi. And at the same time, with my left eye I was watching Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mother Teresa.
Even Angus says that Malcolm is a better guitarist than he is. He makes the drummer's job so easy, he's a metronome.
The last time time I saw the guys was at the end of the 'Rock Or Bust' tour. Yeah, everybody was fine. Malcolm hadn't passed yet, and, of course, I'm sure it hit Angus very, very hard - as with all of us, actually.
Ali... we should have gone to see that movie. Malcolm X was another one.
I'd been very partial to Malcolm X, particularly his self-help teachings.
I tend to be one who just speaks from my soul, and so what comes out sometimes is rather harsh. In that sense, I'm very much a part of the tradition of a Frederick Douglass or a Malcolm X who used hyperbolic language at times to bring attention to the state of emergency.
Aretha Franklin was as important to the civil-rights movement as Malcolm X and Medgar Evers. Artists can choose to take on the tremendous amount of responsibility we have, or choose to ignore it.
