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I suspect by the time the Beatles were writing the White Album, they didn't go, 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand!' I wanna play that! It's like if somebody asked you to put on the clothes you wore in high school. Well, no. No!

John Darnielle

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John Darnielle
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: March 16
Composer
Musician
Singer-Songwriter
Bloomington
Indiana
Like
Didn
Albums
Hands
Asked
School
Clothes
Beatles
Wells
Hold
Wore
Well
Somebody
Suspect
Play
Hand
Suspects
Writing
High
Wanna
Time
White
Album

More quotes by John Darnielle

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I think The Sunset Tree is really the album on which I really learned to trust other musicians, which is so important.
John Darnielle
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My son, who sees me almost every day of his life, will look at me and go, I know that dude! I like that dude! It's incredibly affirming.
John Darnielle
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I'm kind of a hermit. Left to my own devices, I won't submerge myself in anything further afield than the driveway.
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I'm not really a goal-oriented guy. I started doing the Mountain Goats just for the sheer hell of it.
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This is the funny thing about me. People think John just comes up with all the ideas. I'm honored. People think I have a big old brain, but actually I am the sum of the people I work with.
John Darnielle
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Giving up and doing something else (nursing, for me) was exactly what eventually led me to making music that other people wanted to hear.
John Darnielle
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The possibility of disaster remains horrific to me. Like when you know everything's about to go wrong in a way that's not controllable or knowable.
John Darnielle
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I always worry that I'm a dilettante: I know something about lots of things but don't have exhaustive knowledge of much.
John Darnielle
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Do every stupid thing that makes you feel alive.
John Darnielle
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I consider myself a lyricist first and foremost, but if you get something else out of what I do, that's fine too. I'm not sitting back here telling people how they have to take my stuff. We just want to play music, and hope that people like it.
John Darnielle
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You can get into anything if you are determined. I always thought that with music, too.
John Darnielle
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The process of touring is always so weird to me. Once you've made the album, that's over, you move along.
John Darnielle
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Kayfabe is kind of a code. To break kayfabe is to let people know that the punch was not real and that the match was scripted.
John Darnielle
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I'm so disconnected from an indie-rock community that I am the hermit people used to guess I was.
John Darnielle
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I seem to get the best work when I'm angry and depressed and alienated.
John Darnielle
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People say friends don't destroy one another. What do they know about friends?
John Darnielle
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I was 14 or 15 when I discovered poetry, and I pretty much stopped writing prose until Master of Reality.
John Darnielle
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I'll keep making records until I don't have more ideas for records.
John Darnielle
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It's an important moment as a reader, I think, when you can forget the question of whether you need to know what happened. Some people really want hard explanations. I'm the other way. I like mysteries. I don't want to frustrate people. I don't want people to feel like they got no answers, but I want to approach the mystery and sit with it.
John Darnielle
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I couldn't name more than a couple of good drum'n'bass acts, and I have no idea what's big in the dance world right now.
John Darnielle