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Music didn't really occur to me. Michael Jordan and Batman were my favorite two entities then. Michael Jackson was there, but I didn't really get into Bob Dylan, for instance, until I was in my 20s. The record I heard of his that got me interested in singing was Knocked Out Loaded, which is what many people consider to be his worst record.

Willis Earl Beal

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Willis Earl Beal
Age: 54
Musician
Record Producer
Singer-Songwriter
Songwriter
Chicago
Illinois
Really
Record
Jordan
People
Singing
Jackson
Interested
Dylan
Worst
Occur
Heard
Michael
Entities
Didn
Instance
Batman
Music
Favorite
Knocked
Many
Consider
Loaded

More quotes by Willis Earl Beal

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I would much rather not be the center of attention, and I'd much rather travel and be writing my novel, rather than standing on a stage and trying to get people to understand something.
Willis Earl Beal
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My delusion outweighs my talent by far and it always will, because if it doesn't, then there's no point in living.
Willis Earl Beal
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Everything that I do is limitation and complete intuition. I'm a human being. I'm not a musician. I'm not an entertainer. I don't know anything!
Willis Earl Beal
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I'd rather be somewhere building a house, if I knew how. The whole idea of being a professional artist is like a demeaning kind of thing.
Willis Earl Beal
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I was not in touch with reality. Growing up, I was being shielded without my knowing it, because even all the way up to the age of 15, I made these paper basketball men and played with them, like action figures.
Willis Earl Beal
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The person on the shrine is myself. I listen to my own music constantly. I made a whole other record already. I look at myself on the internet constantly, so much so that I actually physically hate my face. It's like I've become apart from myself. I can't even live up to myself.
Willis Earl Beal
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I want to help people to not feel alone, like I feel and have felt for so long. Everybody's just trying their best. I guess I'm like an anti-star.
Willis Earl Beal
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Everything is this distorted mishmash of pop culture that pulls from this era and that era and is just thrown at the wall. These people have no clue what anything really means. There are guys out there getting a million hits for a video.
Willis Earl Beal
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I love Lana Del Rey! It's weird because I read something that said, Oh, Willis Earl Beal and Lana Del Rey are the antithesis of each other. When in fact, she was what I wanted to sound like.
Willis Earl Beal
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I don't mind being artificial sometimes, because I like veiling myself. I mean, I'm not honest or sincere: I am self-centered and narcissistic. I just want to be this entity.
Willis Earl Beal
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I heard Tom Waits in this kinky shop on Belmont Street in Chicago. Considering the way I was raised, they were such obscure voices, but their music saved my life - I didn't know who I was before I heard Bob Dylan and Tom Waits.
Willis Earl Beal
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Nobody symbol occurred to me one night at my grandmother's house. The eyes are an inversion of X'd out eyes - the man is enlightened. His teeth are clenched. It's not a smiley face. It's right before he dies. It plays into my philosophy where everybody gets enlightened before they die.
Willis Earl Beal
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The only way for me to give a good performance is to make myself extremely uncomfortable - and it just so happens that being on stage makes me extremely uncomfortable.
Willis Earl Beal
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In a way, the whole music industry is just catering to the inherent esteem issues all these artists have - it lays it all out on the line and baits the artist, like a light baits a mosquito. And you go right into it. With every comment on the internet, you go up, you go down, and it's a big shitshow full of uneducated people.
Willis Earl Beal
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If the only thing that you want to do is make money - if that's your whole motivation - I think you're lying to yourself. If the only motivation you have is to make money and make it, what's making it? Oh, you get a yacht or an island. Well, you're going to need someone to be on that island. You're going to need people, one way or another.
Willis Earl Beal
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You got this new breed of hipster chicks and hipster men that don't understand anything about sacrifice. They didn't lay it on the line. People like Cat Power, Tom Waits, they are the last of the beats, the real true philosophers.
Willis Earl Beal
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People tend to believe that I want to make soul music, which is not entirely untrue but, really, I want to be like the black Tom Waits - I don't want to make one kind of sound.
Willis Earl Beal
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I don't know what people want. I have delusions of grandeur, but I'm not sitting here talking to you and thinking that I'm the goddamn President. I want to know everything, but I just can't.
Willis Earl Beal
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That's not to say I came from the streets or anything - most of the time I was on my grandmother's back porch. I was kept in a constant state of amniotic fluid.
Willis Earl Beal
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Actually, my ideal life would be to have an evergreen tree farm and, every December, I'd load them up and just stand out on the street and sell Christmas trees.
Willis Earl Beal