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If you ask me who the members of the Rolling Stones or Led Zep or the Clash were, I'd be able to tell you every member. But I couldn't name a single member of Arctic Monkeys.
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If you stick around long enough, you're going to become fashionable eventually.
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I had a few brushes with death, where I nearly chose to go. The final one in 1996 did it for me. I suddenly had that feeling that I wasn't indestructible. There was no big white light experience, I just felt this complete blackness and a huge voice inside me saying, 'This is not right.'
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L.A. is always great. There's something special about L.A. And New York, for me, because it's home. There's nothing quite like walking onstage at Madison Square Garden.
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When I'm with the wife, and we're having a romantic night, I occasionally think about a glass of red wine, but I'll order a sparkling water. I'd like the wine, but it wouldn't end with one glass, so I don't even go there.
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The thing about Depeche songs is that they’re so descriptive. For me, they tell some kind of story about a character who’s trying to redeem himself or to find something to believe in-some kind of faith or hope.
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I go to a very visual place when I'm singing. It's very cinematic and I get this feeling of space. I love when music does that.
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There's that side of me that wants to be the loving, caring father, and there's the other side of me that's just a dirty animal. If I don't let that out, I go nuts.
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To go on the road and see people sing my own lyrics back to me is just fantastic.
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I go to see some big shows of other bands, and I feel like I'm so bombarded and over-stimulated that I lose interest in the music. There has to be light and shade, and less stimulating moments. There has to be an arc to the show.
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I really believe that the more distractions and fixes I remove from my life, the better I'll feel about myself. The biggest of those is Depeche Mode. It's the one marriage that survived, but I'm not sure it works - for me, anyway. Jumping on a plane to go somewhere else and be told how wonderful I am doesn't feel good any more.
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It takes a long time to find your own voice. Along the way, you imitate all the things that influence you - in my case Johnny Cash, Bowie, John Lydon.
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I always played around with writing songs, but when you're spending a lot of time in bars, you have a lot of big ideas, but you don't do much with them.
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There has to be an interaction of musicians on stage. Otherwise I feel too alone up there. When performing is really good, when it really works, maybe once every 15 shows, it's very special, and you realize that's why you do it.
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Like every New Yorker, I have a love/hate relationship with the city. There are times it's overbearing, but when I'm away even for a little while, I can't wait to get home. I am a New Yorker.
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I still hold on to the idea that a record can really change the way I feel.
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You're only going to get surface with me. It takes me ages to warm up to people.
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I do use texting as a great way to communicate quickly, but I don't Twitter or anything.
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In the early to mid-'90s, everywhere I turned, someone had died. It wasn't just people in bands. It was the people I was hanging out with. At some point, I thought, 'I may be heading down that road.'
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I have to feel the audience. I enjoy that feeling of community. There's something sort of spiritual about it in a lot of ways. It's like we're all doing this together.
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When I was growing up in the early '70s and really getting into music, waiting outside the record store for that 45, waiting for a single from The Dead, The Clash, David Bowie, or T-Rex or something to be there. There was something about that that was so special.
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'Presence of God' is really that understanding that sometimes when you step out of your own shoes and just open your ears and listen to what's going on around you, you get answers to the questions you were asking.
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Growing up in a band is weird - you get stuck hanging on to what it is you think you are. But what I took into Depeche was that punk ethic, that you don't have to be accomplished to be a musician. If you've got ideas, you can do this.
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I often find myself on my knees praying to something or someone to not be in control.