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I hated the idea that I would be like my father. Which is one of the reasons I decided I didn't want to be a writer and wanted to be an actor instead. I wanted to go in a total different direction. But, of course, I ended up being a writer anyway.

Loudon Wainwright III

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Loudon Wainwright III
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: September 5
Film Actor
Guitarist
Recording Artist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Television Actor
Loudon Snowden Wainwright III
Loudon Wainwright
Father
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Actor
Ideas
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More quotes by Loudon Wainwright III

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I think I'm the oldest new Bob Dylan around. I predate Bruce Springsteen, Steve Forbat and John Prine. I was probably the first of the new Bob Dylans.
Loudon Wainwright III
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When my mother died, and when my father died, it's big. Our parents are giants they're titans of our lives, so of course it's going to be a big deal.
Loudon Wainwright III
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In a way, the songs are written to be performed. I put them on records, but I'm always thinking about how an audience would react to it. I realized at age 7 that I wanted to be a performer, and I used to do that, and occasionally I'll get an acting job. I don't really make much of a living as an actor, but it's fun to do it when I get a job.
Loudon Wainwright III
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When you make a record, you listen to it literally hundreds of times. When it's done and you can't do anything else, I never listen to my records.
Loudon Wainwright III
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I've never really suffered complete and utter writer's block, really. I equate it with sex: in the beginning of my career, I was writing five songs a week now, I occasionally write a song. But it's an exciting moment when it happens!
Loudon Wainwright III
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I have a song called Men. I mean, manhood and trying to be one, and failing as one, and trying to be a husband and a father, and failing at that. I love failure. It's stuff that I'm thinking about all the time in my life, so it would make sense to me anyway to write about it.
Loudon Wainwright III
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My music comes from country music. Merle Haggard is God, and I do believe that. I'm not too tuned in to country music. I don't know who Brooks and Dunn are. I like Shania Twain, though!
Loudon Wainwright III
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When you have a song on the radio your career and your life changes maybe for the better and maybe for the not so good depending on how it's going that day.
Loudon Wainwright III
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I've been writing about growing old for some time, really from the beginning of my career. It's something I'm apparently hung up about and now that I am old, hopefully I speak about it with some authority.
Loudon Wainwright III
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Displaying a bland, even an eerie, disregard for what appeared to be the facts of the situation, he fell back on an old habit of looking ahead to the next defeat.
Loudon Wainwright III
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Doomsday is quite within our reach, if we will only stretch for it.
Loudon Wainwright III
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I'm always asked if the songs that I write are therapeutic, and my answer is a quick no. In fact, it could be argued that they exacerbate my neurosis.
Loudon Wainwright III
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When a parent dies, the whole house of cards comes down.
Loudon Wainwright III
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If you're 28 and singing about being over the hill, you're pretending. When you're 67 and singing about it, you know what you're talking about.
Loudon Wainwright III
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I'm writing about what's happening to me now. I mean, I had a hip replacement a couple of years ago. I have a song about that. And why wouldn't you? It strikes me that that was a huge event. It's kind of funny and horrible and interesting, so why wouldn't one write about that?
Loudon Wainwright III
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It's nice when people say, 'God, I've been listening to you since 1963 or 1985, or whatever.' I appreciate anybody who goes out and buys music these days.
Loudon Wainwright III
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It's hard for the modern generation to understand Thoreau, who lived beside a pond but didn't own water skis or a snorkel.
Loudon Wainwright III
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I was a smoker for years. Occasionally I slip and have a cigarette. Remarkably, my voice has held up. I'm grateful, obviously. But I don't gargle with honey and ground-up bird eggs. I have no secrets.
Loudon Wainwright III
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I always wanted to be an actor, even as a little kid. So I went to drama school in the late '60s at Carnegie Mellon.
Loudon Wainwright III
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If I had five minutes to live, I don't think I'd be bothered singing a song. I'd be dead, so it won't really matter. I'd have a glass of wine and a cigarette.
Loudon Wainwright III