Hi Nicole, I sent an ask yesterday but I think Tumblr hates me b/c I think you may've answered it by now if you'd got it (based on your output since I sent it, lol!). I was wondering if you know of any discussion of Lindsey's reading habits or preferences? I think of him as quite literary but I'm not sure it's justified by any actual fact. I presume because of Murrow and some more recent comments that he has an interest in sociology/politics/media. Also, thank you for being your splendid self!
Oh, hi! And no, I didn’t get it, sorry! I haven’t ignored anything. :D
Interesting question; would love to hear his thoughts on books and reading in general. I’ll have a quick look around see what I can find. He’s been described as cerebral and he definitely talks like he likes words. I’d happily do a crossword with him, lol. He seems to enjoy artsy films and he’s definitely drawn from poets for his work (Whitman, Dickinson). Here’s some quotes which might interest you in terms of what he’s drawn from culturally.
I read this [Chaplin His Life & Art by David Robinson] not long after I left Fleetwood Mac in the late Eighties. I was looking for the strength to move forward. Chaplin took many aspects of his creative process in his own hands and fought to get things done the way he envisioned them. Plus he constantly reinvented himself. His example gave me the courage to get myself going again.Guitar World, July 2003
I think anyone who creates will tell you it’s very difficult to work completely linearly to get what you’re after. Hitchcock, I gather, worked like that. He would totally preconceive every scene and then try to get it as close as he could to that. I do that, too, in some ways. BAM, January 1981
As rock moves further away from melody, I’d like to find new ways to bring melody back … A lot of times while working alone here at my studio, I’d take 20-minute breaks and read some Whitman and the collected works of Dylan Thomas, to get a sense of how good lyrics should sound. And while my songs are not about a specific world view, they address the current lack of idealism or the inclination to act on that emotion.Billboard, May 1992
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the Jackson Pollock paintings before…he threw away his brushes? They’re (the paintings) making this attempt to get to this sense of something, and he can feel it with his body…and he can see it in his mind…and he’s not getting there! And then suddenly, one day, he says, “Well, screw this!” And he throws the canvas down on the floor and he starts dripping paint on it and you see this tremendous sense of release and energy! And that’s, you know, a fairly apt analogy, I think, to what can happen in music as well if you sort of break through barriers and find new ways to work with colors.Innerview with Jim Ladd, 1984
You know, Picasso says, “Take this, this and this, and make a piece of art out of it.” The point is, if you have the sense, the strength, and the vision, you can do it. It transfers over to music. I consider myself to be a colorist. You have a blank canvas you start off with. You have the flexibility to start in any corner you want. You don’t have to start even with a melody or a song. You work with colors.Rockbilll, November 1984
There are many, many similarities between the visuals…the musicality of what film is about, and the way it’s cut together, the way the camera moves. There’s much, much that I can draw from watching great films that will inspire me musically.Charlie Rose, September 2003
I once read an interview with Hirschfeld, the famous illustrator, who said his best caricatures are the ones that capture the whole personality in one continuous line. That’s sort of what I’m after, too. I like thinking visually of the various musical parts and how they fit together. It’s like a jigsaw.Out of the Cradle press kit, 1992
I like to read biographies about people who have made a mark in history. It’s nice to read what they went through. Lately, I’ve read books on Edward R. Murrow and Charlie Chaplin. [Hobbies?] Drawing, swimming and movies. I love to watch a film 10 or more times and really take it apart.Daily News, 1992
City Lights, directed by Charlie Chaplin (1931). I’d always thought of him as the little tramp with the sped-up walk. It took me a while to get on the wavelength of his old silent movies, but I was in awe of this movie and the number of sketches in which the detail and invention are so rich. It blows me away.Guitar World, July 2003
And a few comments on media/politics, particularly in terms of what he wrote in Peacekeeper and Murrow:
At the time [that I wrote it (circa 2000)] – or now – it was a peace song, quite ironically stated. It’s about how we are becoming increasingly more desensitized to things around the world that are brutal and not standing up for human values. And how the actions of the larger bodies affect the family or individual and how that ultimately turns back on the larger body.Miami Herald, March 24, 2003
Anything artistic should have some ambiguity to it, and you know, if there’s only one way it can be interpreted, it’s probably closing in on propaganda.AOL Sessions, February 2003
I will never be a political writer, but you can look at the world and put what’s out there in a subjective way…Things like “Peacekeeper” and “What’s the World Coming To,” those songs are just human cries. They’re not about anything that’s happened in the past couple of years; they were written well before that. They’re just about the loss of individual voice and the desensitization that seems to be expanding, about the detachment that goes along with power – these things that you look at out there and hope will somehow find a balance. And I think having a family – to some degree buying into middle-class life – that changes what you are concerned with and write about.The Oregonian, July 2003
[To me, Murrow, your song about the great, principled TV newsman Edward R. Murrow, is about the loss of integrity.] Right. Murrow allegedly gave a great speech when he left CBS, saying “If we don’t do the right thing with television as a tool, then it’s going to do us in.” That’s basically what’s going on now: Everything is propaganda. He would be completely shocked if he saw TV today.Interview, June 2003
Murrow gave that famous parting speech when he left CBS, warning what would happen if we didn’t take responsibility for TV and “ use it in the right way. Obviously, we haven’t. So Murrow is just a song about how the media gets abused and how it is used for propaganda. Even the fact that somebody like GE would own NBC. That whole connection–down to the agendas that go into what you see on NBC, because it is owned by a weapons maker. It’s just kind of weird and not very good. Not good for the kids. It diverts and deludes.Guitar World, June 2003
It was inspired by watching TV and seeing what it’s become, how horrendous it’s become as a tool to do exactly what Edward R. Murrow warned against when he gave his famous speech. He said if TV is allowed to distract and delude people, then there will be a large, large price to pay down the line. And we’re seeing that coming true on so many levels. Especially in the world today, where all the media is basically owned and controlled and edited to a certain point of view, in the name of objective news, by all the “same people who are tied in with another company….Murrow would be turning over in his grave if he were to see all of this. Not just the propaganda that passes for news, but the trivialization of so many things, and the intent to distract and delude that he was talking about.Performing Songwriter, May 2003
