I wouldn't live in California. All that sun makes you sterile.
Even though I'm often crazy - and I am, and I know it - still I fight it because I know how sterile, how futile, how bleak... nothing grows from it, and you, meanwhile, only grow into it like a snail.
The good thing about Pro Tools is you can actually hear what you're working on, so it doesn't just become this intellectual idea. But Pro Tools can be dangerous, too. It can make things sterile.
Giving birth was the most amazing thing I've ever done. I'd been living in a Third World country, and I said, 'I'm going to just squat behind a tree.' I basically did that but in a chair in my living room. I didn't want a sterile hospital room. I didn't want doctors. I had a midwife.
I made many studio albums and I think the danger of studio recording is that if you do not watch out, you come out with a perfectly sterile performance.
So many celebrity websites you go to are so sterile that you know they just pay somebody to do it and there's not even an ounce of them in it.
We are raising today's children in sterile, risk-averse and highly structured environments. In so doing, we are failing to cultivate artists, pioneers and entrepreneurs, and instead cultivating a generation of children who can follow the rules in organized sports games, sit for hours in front of screens and mark bubbles on standardized tests.
Bringing my two children up while writing was just a part of life. I'd much rather have had their interruptions than been stuck in a sterile office. This way, I had welcome distractions. I had to load the washing machine, I had to go out and buy lemons.
For members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the term 'testimony' is a warm and familiar word in our religious expressions. It is tender and sweet. It has always a certain sacredness about it. When we talk about testimony, we refer to feelings of our heart and mind rather than an accumulation of logical, sterile facts.
I always go for that live, honest feel when I'm going for that first rhythm track. I'll never hold back on a part just so it'll be easier for me to double it later on - to my ears, it sounds sterile if you do that. I always want to get that initial track kicking and full of slurs, squeals and feel. I'll worry about doubling it later!
