JeffreyGeoffreyBlog

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I was obsessed with it. It was everything. It was an enormous part of my day growing up, every day. What are the odds of being successful? Very, very slim. I stood on the stage of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame one night, and I had Mick Jagger to my right and George Harrison on my left. I go, ‘Okay. Millions of kids in 1964 picked up a guitar. Millions. A few of them learned to play a little bit. A few of those got in a little local band. A few of those might have gotten into a recording studio and made a demo and maybe they even had one record released. A few of those, maybe, made an album. A few of those had an album that was successful. A few of those had a career that lasted more than four or five years. You start whittling it down, and you realize, well, for better or for worse, I was the one that ended up on the stage that night. It’s as shocking to me as it is to anybody else. I put all the time and work in, but there’s still a lot of natural ability and luck that goes into it. And I never take it for granted.

Bruce Springsteen

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I’m just one of those people who can’t be normal. I tried doing the ‘straight job’ thing after university, but I couldn’t hack it. I was depressed and self-medicated much of the time, pretending that I didn’t know what I really wanted to do. Finally, I got myself into such a miserable state that my truth was too obvious to ignore: either I make music or I face my own oblivion.

Big Rude Jake

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A Crisis Right Now: San Francisco and Manila Face Rising Seas

The two sprawling metro areas — one rich, one poor — offer a vision of what could be a watery future for 600 million coastal residents worldwide.

Ms. Espiritu doesn’t plan to leave. She’s grown accustomed to fleeing the storms and cleaning up afterward. She fears moving anywhere else will be prohibitively expensive. Never mind that Pariahan is drowning.

“We don’t want to leave,” she said. “When you have coffee, sugar and rice, life is good. The air is free. There’s a solar panel for electricity.”

“We can live here.”

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There is no harder job than being a parent. The pressure of playing in front of 90,000 fans is bearable. But being responsible for my own children is by far the most difficult mission in my life.

Vincent Kompany, footballer

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You have to preserve yourself — no one else is going to do it for you.

Ilfenesh Hadera, actress

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If all you do is pull weeds in a garden, but you never plant any vegetables or any flowers, you’re not going to have a harvest. So you need to make sure you’re planting seeds just as much as you’re pulling weeds.

James Pawelski, Director of Education at the University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Center

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You have to be realistic. The stage isn’t the same anymore. You’re no longer the Beatles. You’ve got to be the opening act sometimes.

Tristan Thompson, Cleveland Cavaliers, on basketball life without LeBron James

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Number one, I want to be a great dad, which is harder than Instagram.

Kevin Systrom, former co-owner of Instagram, explaining his plans after leaving the company

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It’s always beneficial to be reminded where you came from, especially in my position now — to be reminded that you got into this without any expectations and because it was fun.

Ben Gibbard, Death Cab For Cutie

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George Clooney Says 'Batman & Robin' Was a Career Wake-Up Call

"I needed to take control of the films I made," says the actor, who will be honored with AFI's Life Achievement Award on June 7.

Who gave you the best advice?

My uncle George. He told me not to wake up at 65 and say, “You know what I wish I had done in my life?” He died a couple of years later with a lifetime of regrets, the greatest of them was not chasing his dreams.

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Wild Stories of Partying with Warhol and Bowie in the 70s

Painter Duncan Hannah relives New York's most debauched decade and shares exclusive behind-the-scenes photos with VICE.

There weren’t that many people in the scene, so I get how you might not think it’s going anywhere. The lag time between underground and the mainstream was long, maybe five years. The media, the internet, and money changed everything. None of this was about money.

Even in the art world, there were a few famous artists but if you were going to be an artist… I had this picture in my head of a coldwater flat, bricks, candles in Chianti bottles, Beatnik girls in black leotards, and bongo music. I never thought of Picasso living in chateaus. I just thought, “La vie boheme! It’s not for everybody, but it’s going to be for me.” I just didn’t want to have a job. I wanted to scrape by. If I could do that, I would be a success.

There are moments in the book that seem like you were nose-diving, but rather than crash, you pulled up at the last minute. The book has a happy ending. I get sober in this book, but it took me another four years to stay sober.

I thought living an extreme life with drugs, alcohol, and sex would turn me into a better person and a better artist. Then there comes a point where you realize: “I am doing a lot more of that than actually working, and it’s not going to translate into anything.”

David Hockney told me, “You’re selling yourself short in an attempt to be stylish. Don’t worry about that. That will come by itself. Just work hard, and you will evolve into yourself naturally. Don’t choose who to be—grow into yourself through hard work. And all will be revealed.”

[ice-nix]

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Nothing Is Quick In The Desert is a saying I use when the average person looks at the record industry. It looks dead like a desert. But there’s plenty of life in the desert when one is educated on what they see and hear. There, a cactus absorbs and stores water deep in its root, taken from the air itself and certain creatures thrive in that dry heat whereas the average cannot. It pays to be above average (or well below it) in the desert for survival. The music industry is similar in that analogy. It’s still in motion, it just needs redefinition.

Chuck D, on the name of Public Enemy’s new album

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Q&A: PUP’s Stefan Babcock On Unexpected Success, What Comes Next, And That Song About Killing His Bandmates

About one year ago, the Toronto punk quartet PUP released their second album, The Dream Is Over, a set of 10 ferociously catchy anthems that took its name from the diagnosis singer-guitarist Stefan Babcock received from his doctor after he blew out his vocal cords and was told he'd never sing again. He fought through this setback, and based on the rapturous reception that greeted the album and the dedicated fanbase that followed, it seems now that Babcock's dreams were just getting started. This past Sunday, PUP played a set full of fist-pumping and crowd-surfing at Brooklyn's Northside Festival, second-to-last from headliner (and one of Babcock's favorite bands) Thursday, and alongside young emo and punk heroes such as the Hotelier, Jeff Rosenstock, and Tony Molina. The day felt like a coronation for a group of artists that once struggled to receive much recognition from Brooklyn media types. Speaking in his tour bus a few hours before his group played, Babcock just seemed overjoyed

STEREOGUM: What was going on in your life when PUP started? Did you have a job?

BABCOCK: I had a job. We all mostly have career jobs, all four of us. The thing is, in my brain, more or less, I’d given up on being in a “successful band.” But I still wanted to play music. I always knew that writing songs and playing was going to be a part of my life, but I just thought it was going to be different than what it used to be. The band that I had before PUP, we weren’t very successful, but we were always trying, and we always felt like we were on the verge of making it work. It never quite did. So going into this band, it was just sort of like, “We’re just going to have fun, and I just want to write songs and play some shitty shows, and hang out with my friends.” That was it for us, until there was definitely a turning point a month or two before we went into record the first album, where things started clicking.

We started getting good tour offers, and it made us reassess our approach, and we felt like maybe this could really actually be a thing. It’s a scary thing to go down that road for a second or third time when you’ve already given up on it. But it was like, fuck it, what do we have to lose? We all quit our jobs on the same day, and went on tour and came home and went in and recorded a record. We were lucky, because we took a big risk and it paid off.

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With the Canadian collective’s first album in seven years on the way, Kevin Drew reflects on what’s changed (technology’s unrelenting narcissism) and what hasn’t (the dependability of true companionship).

“You’ve got to have someone that’s able to rub your back and not just write you a little thumbs up,” he tells me after trying and failing to plug our call into his car stereo, because his phone doesn’t have a headphone jack. Now more than ever, he feels lucky to be in a band full of such back rubbers, some of whom he’s known since high school. “They don’t judge you or shame you. They don’t put you into that spiral. Because when you get older, even if you have the greatest of lives, you can’t help but shadow yourself with what hasn’t happened. It is a toxic way of living but it’s also a very natural feeling. This is why it’s wonderful to have a crew.”

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People get up too early to leave houses where they don’t want to live, to drive to jobs where they don’t want to be, in one of the most dangerous forms of transport on Earth. I’ve never gotten used to that.

Thom Yorke

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Chris Stapleton Rides His Own Country Music Wave

At the end of his tour, Mr. Stapleton reflected on his No. 1 album and his career night at the Country Music Association Awards.

Adulation from the Nashville establishment aside, Mr. Stapleton is still something of a man without a home. “I didn’t used to be O.K. with it,” he said. “Everybody gets through a phase where it’s, ‘Ah, if I could just sound just like Vince Gill.’ Then you figure out that you have your own voice, whether you like it or not, and that’s what you should stick with.”