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I’ve been going through a lot of… stuff. I need some space, which people were very kind enough to give me, and I feel really gracious about that. Nobody forces me to do things or say things or do interviews.

Bradford Cox

When money and fame happen too late, it’s like pouring kerosene over a fire of self-loathing.
BRADFORD COX

Fire Late Loading Self Too
I’m obsessed with five different things a day. It’s like lightbulbs in a Christmas light chain.
BRADFORD COX

Different Obsessed
Talk to Arto Lindsay and I’m sure he’s tired of people asking him about DNA; he’s probably really into what he’s doing now, which is good stuff.
BRADFORD COX

DNA People Tired
A song like “Walkabout”, it’s totally imitative. The goal of that song was to make people happy, and I’ve never really made a song to make people happy before.
BRADFORD COX

Goal People Song
Musicians and artists are not… it’s not like politicians or something where you can’t really affect them.
BRADFORD COX

Artist Men Two
There’s not like this separate caste system where it’s like, “I’m the musician, you’re the audience. Never the two shall meet.” It was a case where it was like, “Hey, you know what? I’m on your level, man.”
BRADFORD COX

Audience Know Learn Musician Shall
People say ‘I don’t want to die alone!’ But you know what, honestly? I don’t want to die with a bunch of people looking at me.
BRADFORD COX

Bunch Look People Want
I played the theme from Twin Peaks on a little tiny Casio keyboard. People politely applauded. I just fell in love with that song and thought it was very heartbreaking.
BRADFORD COX

Heartbreaking Love Play Pretty
When I go on a nostalgia trip it’s not aesthetic. For me it’s about trying to recapture the smell or the feeling of something that I’ve experienced in the past personally.
BRADFORD COX

Feelings Past Smell
I read a lot – surveys of vernacular music. A lot of it is the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music, which I’ve loved since I was in high school.
BRADFORD COX

Interesting Library School
Audiences tend to dig the earlier stuff by any given musician, and the artists themselves always tend to prefer the thing that they’re doing now.
BRADFORD COX

Artist Musician Stuff
You think about people like Elvis, Kurt Cobain, or the Beatles, who grew up without privilege and needed a certain validation through peoples’ acceptance, or admiration from their peers. And money is part of that, but it always comes too late.
BRADFORD COX

Acceptance Thinking Validation
The first thing I think I ever played in public, aside from singing in church, would have been – and this is a true story – when I was about nine or 10 years old, I was obsessed with Twin Peaks.
BRADFORD COX

People Song Thinking
I like playing at public schools. I like when there’s more of a diverse audience. I’ll play wherever people want to hear my music, and I’ll be glad and grateful for the opportunity, but I’d rather not play for a bunch of white privileged kids.
BRADFORD COX

Grateful Kids School
I think the younger kids need to realize there’s this whole forgotten 90s that people don’t really talk about.
BRADFORD COX

Kids People Thinking
When I started having a couple of beers and loosening up, I realized how many years I had wasted going back to my hotel room alone when I could have gone and just had a beer or two.
BRADFORD COX

Beer Couple Hotel Realize Years
My entire education in music was in reading interviews with bands like Stereolab and finding out about Brazilian music or a Romanian composer. You expose yourself to what people you look up to admire.
BRADFORD COX

Looks People Reading
You’re always as a musician trying to shock yourself or create music that’s maybe even too weird for your own taste.
BRADFORD COX

Musician Taste Trying
The sober guy is always going to have this air of arrogance or self-righteousness, but it’s not my intention. I just knew that if I drank, I’d have a drinking problem.
BRADFORD COX

Air Arrogance Drinking Intention Self
I don’t have anything to prove.
BRADFORD COX

Anything Country People Prove Totally
I want to build an audience that’s willing to follow us in whichever direction we might choose.
BRADFORD COX

Audience Build Choose
We didn’t have MTV, and I was desperate for something. You know, you’re young, you want something off the beaten path. And Twin Peaks was like, surrealism on network TV.
BRADFORD COX

Desperate Path Twins
I like my solitude, and I’m a strong-willed person; I’m a very hard-to-be-around person sometimes, I guess.
BRADFORD COX

Solitude Sometimes Strong
I’m not meaning that in a disrespectful way; you go where people want to hear your music. So if that’s where people want to hear me play.
BRADFORD COX

Disrespectful Meaning Peopel Want
I think people are intimidated by me, and I don’t know why. Sometimes even my own bandmates can be intimidated, or irritated, by me.
BRADFORD COX

Irritated People Thinking
You gotta have friends, and it’s really hard to have friends that don’t operate on the same schedule as you or do the same kind of things you do, because they don’t understand it.
BRADFORD COX

Friend Kind Realizing Schedule
They had it at the library and I always thought that was interesting, even when I was into punk and stuff. Just the history of storytelling and the amount of melancholy a lot of old music has.
BRADFORD COX

History Lot Music Old Storytelling

I’ve been going through a lot of… stuff. I need some space, which people were very kind enough to give me, and I feel really gracious about that. Nobody forces me to do things or say things or do interviews.

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I’ve been going through a lot of… stuff. I need some space, which people were very kind enough to give me, and I feel really gracious about that. Nobody forces me to do things or say things or do interviews.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bradford Cox Quotes