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.'
David Johansen
I've been around the block a couple of times, and the guy I am now is the guy I like to be.
Sometimes when I hear my voice on tape, I'm like, 'Who is that horrible man?'
Until I was six years old we lived in the projects, then my two brothers and three sisters and I moved to a three-bed that my mother's father built.
I got arrested once on stage in Memphis for looking too much like Liza Minnelli.
Most bands are commercial enterprises. But I'm not in one of those bands.
As I recall, my life as a child was so all-consuming that I barely had time to consider the future.
Playing music is the best thing in the world. It makes show business almost bearable.
The first Latin music that blew my mind was bumba, which was a Puerto Rican beat.
You know, when you're making a record, you come up with 15, 20 songs. Then they start to fall by the wayside as your interest wanes. It's kind of like a process of elimination to determine which songs wind up on the record.
I'm doing exactly what I want to do, and I'm having fun doing it.
The stuff that I dig, it's usually got a soulful component to it. A singer that I really like. I might not understand the language that they're singing in, but I'm really communing with this person.
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.
We thought that's the way you were supposed to be if you were in a rock 'n' roll band. Flamboyant.
It's really a drag to do the same project over and over again.
My father was a Norwegian tenor and my mother a New York Irish librarian.
When I'm sleeping I do a lot of living.
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.
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'm not impersonating anybody. I'm perfectly satisfied with what I am.
I don't know why I'm alive but I know there's a reason for it.
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.
You know when you read that someone has to leave a show or a tour because they had 'nervous exhaustion'? Well, I had one of those and discovered that I was quite close to death. I always assumed that my lifestyle was going to take me at an early age, but when it was actually occurring I was, 'Not yet!' I pulled back.
Everything I've done I've just fallen into.
You try things on in life. You wear them for a while, and you see what's next.
I've been tired since I was 15.
I don't really like to sit around the house listening to my own records. They're not that good.
I'm afraid of me.
I still do a lot of shows with Brian Koonin, but we haven't had a full band lately.
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.
When I was a kid, I had some Charles Lloyd records.
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.
