I wrote this in 1857 when I was a pirate.

So because this is a rock and roll show, why should we act self-important, we should have fun, right? Fuck a bunch of damn Billy Corgan worshipping motherfuckers, let’s just have fun.

— Ryan Adams (IMU Lounge, Iowa, 6th Dec 2001)

typewrittenword:

“c’mon, let’s go” by Ryan Adams

Ryan Adams is very hard to describe musically, which is great; that’s the kind of music I like to do. When we were recording the Cold Roses project, he very much wanted the Jerry Garcia type of steel sound

— Cindy Cashdollar

I don’t love all metal, and I don’t think anybody does, but what I do love about it is, I guess I like the thrill of the riffs, and I like the way they [the riffs] make me feel in real time. I think metal can be as organic as any blues music, or pop music, and there is just a different sort of majestic property to metal and a certain fantasy element that just isn’t in any other kind of music.

— Ryan Adams

(Source: nzherald.co.nz)

I’ve gone from atheism to believing everything on the planet is God. Even when Sisqo sings about thongs, that’s about God, too.

— Ryan Adams, Spin (Dec 2000)

“We did the cover shoot out in Los Angeles, and we did a lot of different poses and everything. One of the things we had was this big huge flag, and I thought it just looked powerful - that’s what attracted me to it. I also kind of wanted to tweak the whole Bruce Springsteen ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ thing. Instead of me standing there all tough like Bruce, I’m in my slouchy, twitchy posture, my head down, my hair a mess. We thought it looked cool, but it was also meant to be a bit of a goof.”

Ryan Adams (New York Time Magazine, Nov 4 2001)

It’s time to revert to that great punk rocker Shakespeare and ‘To thine own self be true.’ It’s really the punkest idea of all time. Don’t do what people tell you to, just because they’re saying it real loud and like they know what they’re talking about. Make up your own mind. Do your own thing. Heal the way you need to heal.

— Ryan Adams, New York Time Magazine (Nov 4 2001)

“For me personally, I think that the thing I find the most shocking or weird is that most people think I’m provocative to the point of being controversial about it. And maybe like a little cocky, and I actually, believe it or not, spend most of my creative life being very unsure but very dedicated to making lots of music because I love that part of it. It’s all of the psychobabble that comes with it being communicated to other people that freaks me out, makes me want to internalize and makes it hard for me sometimes to complete the good feelings of the things that I’ve done because I’m shocked and afraid of the response of other people. And one of the defense mechanisms is to be very tight-lipped or reactionary.”

Ryan Adams (Harp, Dec/Jan 2004)

“I wanna simplify so far back to the point where I see the buffalo, and I grab the piece of charcoal and I go to the cave. And I sketch the buffalo on the cave wall. That’s the highest art. Ya know, the caveman certainly wasn’t trying to fuckin’ impress the girl down the street that worked in a record store with his goddamn caveman drawing. People couldn’t understand how beautiful that buffalo was, and something compelled him to go to that wall and draw a buffalo on the wall because he dreamt of the buffalo. His relationship was still directly with God, not even with the cave wall or the charcoal. He’s like, ‘I see buffalo. I recreate buffalo.’ That’s all it is. I want to get there […] I say, ‘Bring it on.’ Go and get the whole bucket of shit and throw it at me, ‘cause I see the cave clearer every day.’”

Ryan Adams (Paste Magazine, Dec 2003)

(Source: pastemagazine.com)

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Whiskeytown, “Empty Baseball Park”

“I always liked that song, and that line in it about stumbling into an empty baseball park — ‘Strike one, strike two, strike three, we’re all out,’that was all about the whole band, the guys in Whiskeytown. We literally rehearsed behind a baseball park for junior league kids in Raleigh. […] We would just get loaded and go over there, and we’d be running around tacklin’ each other and just being fucks. It was the funniest place to hang out. We’d just get loaded and wake up hungover on, like, home plate, like, at 6 a.m. [Drummer] Skillet [Gilmore] would be asleep in the bleachers.”

(Source: pastemagazine.com)

I think there’s a consensus in rock ‘n’ roll that Keith Richards, Patti Smith, and Velvet Underground looked cool. And I always liked the way Sonic Youth looked - like they could give a fuck. But you gotta be sensible: denim is good because you can get it dirty, it’s not that expensive, and it works as a suit. You can look sharp in it if you care to, or you can look relaxed.

— Ryan Adams, British GQ (April 2002)

Any cliff that Ryan wants to jump off of isn’t too high. Nobody is afraid of anything. Ryan put together the band of his dreams, and we’ve turned into our own little traveling gang. This lineup is totally impenetrable.

— Neal Casal (Blackbook, Oct 2007)

For me writing is not a chore. I like it like a tennis player likes to play tennis, or a mountain climber likes to climb mountains, or a drug addict likes to do drugs, or a policeman likes to catch crooks.

— Ryan Adams (CNN.com, Oct 2002)

I like the sad song. I like to identify with it because I like the place it sends me. If the characters in my songs start off with a new pair of jeans, they’re lucky to walk out with their t-shirt. I beat them up pretty good. To feel sad is just as intense as any kind of glory. Glory fades.

— Ryan Adams

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