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I don't think anybody thinks about their past much, unless they're in a mental institution.

Tom Verlaine

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Tom Verlaine
Age: 74
Born: 1949
Born: December 13
Guitarist
Recording Artist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Songwriter
Morristown
NJ
Thinking
Mental
Thinks
Institutions
Anybody
Unless
Past
Much
Think
Institution

More quotes by Tom Verlaine

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Style to me is incidental. The British are very adept at creating it for its own sake, but the best style is incidental. John Coltrane had a style but it was totally incidental to what he was.
Tom Verlaine
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The whole reputation of being a rock guitar player, I could really care less about it. Still, when I hear new groups today I do occasionally hear something where I think... ahh, I've heard that lick before.
Tom Verlaine
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I like thinking of myself as invisible. I find it a very advantageous way to live. Unfortunately, its not the way the music business works. If you don't create some kind of public image, it gets created for you.
Tom Verlaine
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I told somebody in Europe I was 43. I never tell my true age. It's ridiculous that people ask. The press doesn't deserve anything but lies.
Tom Verlaine
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My non-career. My excuse for a career? Honestly, I never think about the word 'career.' I've had managers, the minute they say it to me, they look at me and just roll their eyes.
Tom Verlaine
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Boogie! I hate boogie, God, I mean, not the Chicago boogie like Willie Dixon or Howlin' Wolf, but all those awful white bands.
Tom Verlaine
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I don't want any production credit. I think producers are overrated. They're for people who, first of all, don't know anything about music or arranging and have no ear for their own doings. They can't tell a good solo from a bad solo, stuff like that.
Tom Verlaine
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When I think of 'influence', I think of 'influenza', like somebody's picked up a germ.
Tom Verlaine
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It's like first grade where you make all your mistakes and people see it and yet some people see that there's something there that's really valuable. That's the way it went for more than 2 years almost 3 years of playing.
Tom Verlaine
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I really don't have that much interest in stardom.
Tom Verlaine
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I don't think Marquee Moon was so good, y'know? Just another record. First records everybody likes a lot.
Tom Verlaine
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I don't see us as a big media gimmick band. We don't have a cultivated appearance or anything like Kiss.
Tom Verlaine
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I like thinking of myself as invisible. I find it a very advantageous way to live.
Tom Verlaine
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I always hated jazz guitar. I loved jazz saxophone but I hated jazz guitar. If I would buy an organ trio record I would make sure I'd buy one that did not have a guitar player on it. The sound was awful!
Tom Verlaine
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Places like Belgium and the south of France, Sweden and Copenhagen are really alive. They really love rock 'n' roll, they really respond.
Tom Verlaine
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I'm kind of proud of that little record! I mean I've heard about a million other records that have come out since then by all these groups around here and there and I really like 'Little Johnny Jewel'.
Tom Verlaine
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Well, I worked in a sheet metal factory once and scarred my wrist from the cuts. I found a sympathetic psychiatrist who told the draft board I was insane. We used the scars as proof of a suicide attempt.
Tom Verlaine
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I wonder what all those Chinese poets sound like in Chinese. I like their distilled quality.
Tom Verlaine
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I never liked mellow sounding guitar.
Tom Verlaine
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I always thought I was commercial. I always thought I was writing hit singles. These days, whatever's on the radio is considered commercial. People like what's on the radio, whatever it is.
Tom Verlaine