Performing Quotes

In the early days, I might have gotten on stage and begun to sing as a desperate attempt to communicate, but now I found that singing was both a physical and emotional joy. It was sensuous, a pure pleasure, which didn't take away from the emotions being expressed—even if they were melancholic. Music can do that; you can enjoy singing about something sad.

It reset and mended my freshly damaged and distorted view of life, and made me recognize that this thing we call music, this primal expression that we reshape and refine and define ourselves with, is the gift I was given. The ability to communicate what others feel but cannot fully express, the passing down and around of songs and stories, from Pete Townshend to Joey Ramone to me, to the audiences who take the time and effort to support our work and give us a way to support ourselves -- I'm thinking this is what I am supposed to be doing.

if somebody doesn't have any talent, get off the stage! you're wasting my time.

In musical performances one can sense that the person on stage is having a good time even if they're singing a song about breaking up or being in a bad way. For an actor this would be anathema, it would destroy the illusion, but with singing one can have it both ways. As a singer, you can be transparent and reveal yourself on stage, in that moment, and at the same time be the person whose story is being told in the song. Not too many kinds of performance allow that.

Play always as if in the presence of a master.

One forgets that part of one's performance is one's history—or sometimes the lack of it. You're playing against what an audience knows, what they expect. This seems to be true of all performers; there's baggage that gets carried into the venue that we can't see.

It was hard to bear your soul while someone was talking to their friend about a new sweater they bought.

Powerpoint presentations are a kind of theater, a kind of augmented stand-up. Too often it's a boring and tedious genre, and audiences are subjected to the bad as well as the good.

I like performing because it's direct contact with live people. I write a good deal of the time but that's introspective creation rather than interaction.

You can reach maximum performance by engaging in physical activities.

It only becomes art if it touches other people.

The time of the third millennium is the time when the people of God will walk, covered byGod’s glory, performing great wonders and miracles.

Sometimes the stage terrifies me,” I confessed. “But being here alone like this, it’s freeing.”Solitude can be freeing,” he said.

When you play, never mind who listens to you.