David Johansen Quotes

The first Latin music that blew my mind was bumba, which was a Puerto Rican beat.

Sometimes when I hear my voice on tape, I'm like, 'Who is that horrible man?'

Sometimes I've found that by getting into a certain drag, or a certain feeling, you can cast off your mortal coil and really do something. I don't know if it's important, but it's something. It's entertainment.

Playing music is the best thing in the world. It makes show business almost bearable.

My father was a Norwegian tenor and my mother a New York Irish librarian.

Music is my love and to me acting is more mercenary. I don't pound the pavements for roles: if it happens, it happens. I hate that auditioning thing.

Most bands are commercial enterprises. But I'm not in one of those bands.

It's really a drag to do the same project over and over again.

In the late '70s, I had a band - the David Johansen band, for lack of a better name - and I started collecting, not records, but tapes from people I knew who had jump-blues records.

I've been tired since I was 15.

I'm not impersonating anybody. I'm perfectly satisfied with what I am.

I'm doing exactly what I want to do, and I'm having fun doing it.

I'm compelled to paint nearly every day. I just felt like making a painting, went out and bought paints and a canvas. Now it fulfills me creatively when I'm not doing music: it's something you can do by yourself and it's totally yours. It's a great adjunct to my life.

I'm afraid of me.

I think we as a band, as individuals, understand that all popular music stems from blues and jazz and even pop, but rock 'n' roll especially comes from blues.

I mean, if you asked me what I'm going to be doing when I'm 85, I'd make a quick picture in my mind and, well, I'll be singing.

I listen to a lot of different kinds of music.

I got arrested once on stage in Memphis for looking too much like Liza Minnelli.

I don't really like to sit around the house listening to my own records. They're not that good.

I don't know why I'm alive but I know there's a reason for it.

Everything I've done I've just fallen into.

As I recall, my life as a child was so all-consuming that I barely had time to consider the future.

When you're a kid, you have this feeling like you're indestructible. Your mortality doesn't even occur to you. But as time goes by, you realize, 'I better cut this out or that out if I want to continue to exist.'

I still do a lot of shows with Brian Koonin, but we haven't had a full band lately.

I've been around the block a couple of times, and the guy I am now is the guy I like to be.