I had a blast doing the Warped Tour, but it's good to be home, for sure.
Pop music is not a threatening style of music.
Def Leppard is obviously a different band that we are, but the music work well tighter. And the audiences seem work well together too. We are opening, but we're having a good time.
I think I look better in darker clothes. And maybe the fact that I wear black so much makes me more aware of putting people at ease.
My parents taught me I could be anything in the world I wanted to be.
You know I don't care if the world thinks I'm smart or not.
The media says that equality for women has arrived, but if you look around, you still don't see girls playing guitars and having success with it.
I'll be working until I die.
If you really believe in yourself, you cannot listen to other people.
You follow any family around, you're going to see elation, you're going to see disharmony.
The follow your dreams thing is really important because so many people are railroaded into taking other paths by their family, their friends, people who should be supportive going, 'What are you talking about?' Even just seemingly regular career paths, but if it's not what people expect for you they kind of react funny.
I think what I'm going to do is get more balance in my life to still be able to go out and play the hard rock 'n' roll and do what I like to do in music.
We were really grown up for our age and it was an incredible special band.
Shaving my head was a millennium ritual, to not let it pass as just another New Year's Eve. A lot has happened to me in the last couple of years, personally and spiritually. I wanted to mark it for myself.
I'm not a list person.
Even though everybody's lives are different, in general we're all human beings, and we go through the same things: disappointments, the pleasures of life, life and death. That's always been a really big part of the show to me, making sure the audience feels connected, and that carries through to the album.
I know music is subjective.
I like to hang out with my friends. I love music. I like to go to the movies. I like to eat. I like to cook.
I don't know if I get recognized necessarily, though I do get looked at a lot - but I don't know if it's because of who I am, or if people just think I look weird.
A lot of people ask me why I don't expand and explore other musical areas, but I like the plain three- and four-chord rock-and-roll that I call the the semi-blues.
I don't look good in beige.
Obviously, some people are thick, and they're not gonna see what they don't want to see.
Why there aren't people out there willing to have fun playing rock 'n' roll. I just don't get it.
I bought one of those Learn How to Play Guitar Chords By Yourself and it shows you the diagram where to put your hands and I took that in my room, sat with my singles and learned how to play guitar.
We all make judgments on people, but some are much more brutal than others. It's easy to say, 'Ya know, I'm not crazy about what she's wearing,' but you don't have to be nasty about it, and you don't have to be public about it.
I think it's important to have mystique.
You know, I have a really tough time finding new bands.
And you have a record company behind it, this is a key too, you need people to fight for your records, at least a little bit. So if you have a great song, it's catchy, and you've got a little bit of help, I think that's all you need. But there hasn't been that in music.
Girls see these defined roles they're supposed to follow in life, but when I was a young child, my parents told me I could be anything.
I wouldn't say no to other kinds of musical opportunities. I guess that it just depends on what it was or what it required me to do, and if I felt that it compromised my own soul.
One of the mistakes I made was believing that the rock n' roll genre as a genre was much more free than the whole pop or R&B scene.
Partly, I like a bad reputation. But I also want a reputation of being a good person.
When I came back to it, we amicably separated from Warner Bros. I just picked up where I left off, trying to write the rest of this record. It took awhile to get out.
I've been doing this stuff for so long it's the one aspect of my life that I've paid attention to and really sort of not paid attention to the rest of it.
We always play clubs. It's not something that I feel above. Those are my favorite shows because they're intimate, they're tight, their sweaty, they're hot. You're close to the people. Those are my favorites.
Women are still second-class citizens.
If you're secure in yourself, and even if you're not secure in yourself, you don't need to bully.
Well, I'll tell you, I don't know how aware teenagers are of me. I think it really depends on the teenager and how well-versed in music they are and what kind of music they like.
I figured out it was a social thing, what women were allowed to do. At a very young age, I decided I was not going to follow women's rules.
Blackheart Records being 25 years old represents staying power and the fact that we weren't able to get a record out through conventional means, so we had to create this record company to put out our records if we wanted to be a band that had records to give out to their fans.
I love to engage with people who come to see us.
I really wanted it to be organic and coming from my heart. So, I think maybe the initial thought of wanting to go in that direction, I had to wait until things happened in our world and in our country that fired me up enough where the words came out organically.
Cutting meat out of your diet is the best thing you can do for animals and your own health.
I like the way black looks. I think I look better in darker clothes. And maybe the fact that I wear black so much makes me more aware of putting people at ease. The black is sort of the bad-guy guise, so I work overtime to make people comfortable.
I love sports. I love animals. I love kids. I want to save the world. So how do I combine all those things? I don't know.
I love school. I was a great student.
People are very sincere in their praise, and you can't take it lightly.
I'd like to just be a little bit more open to making mistakes and not worrying about it so much.
I'm having fun opening up. Sort of struggling to get the audience into it. It's good. It makes you fight. Not fight like antagonistic. But fight for what you believe.
