I don't think I'll ever be able to fully explain the way that the Velvet Underground's records opened a door in my head. But it has something to do with Lou Reed as a mythic figure: a person who fitted no category, who defied limits and trends and definitions.
Ezra Furman
I feel like my consignment and fear from people pushed me to become a performer.
Just being a normal person and having a social life involves a lot of dishonesty for me.
I heard the Velvet Underground and that changed things when I was like, 15.
I guess I just do being a man different than some.
I was a suburban kid who fancied myself somehow intellectual. I was into punk rock but I couldn't get into the subcultural signifiers of dyed hair, safety pins and torn denim. Being a punk seemed like a new set of rules that I wasn't interested in having to follow.
More visibility is more power, but more vulnerability.
I write all the time and I try to think of ideas all the time.
Part of what you hear when somebody says something awful to you is like, 'They're right, I look ridiculous, why am I dressed this way, I should go home and change.' For me that voice is always in my head, right around the corner.
Not only am I a shy person, I take a little while to say what I mean, especially in a social situation, and usually those move too fast for me to say anything at all.
Far from being a showbiz gimmick, for me dressing as I please has signalled the end of a lifelong performance of straightforward masculinity.
It's always about staying competitive with myself... Popularity is something that may happen from time to time, and I don't trust it and I don't think it means too much. I'm going for greatness.
I like going to bed early and getting up early, but that doesn't happen on tour.
I think I'm gradually becoming a more politically aware person.
I always felt like I had a punk album waiting to be made.
Sometimes there's a day where I don't feel good being out in the world, and I feel unsafe in the world in general. And an anxiety about just showing up in the world. It's kind of irrational, but people do say things to me out in the street about how I'm dressed.
I think there's a large worry in queer communities about imitating straight people, when queerness has its own identity and maybe can be a radical force that should be dismantling stuff that locks people into structures.
If I can see the sunrise - and I usually don't - I like to. I'm a big fan of the sun.
We spent a lot of time making 'Transangelic Exodus' and toward the end of it, my ability and my love for music - that is, just garage music, direct and immediate - started to feel neglected.
I don't really believe in trying to erase every Woody Allen movie from history. For one thing, that's kind of unfair to all the people who worked on those movies or albums or whatever it is. What did they do wrong to have their work erased from culture?
Desperate times make for desperate songs.
I am frustrated at misconceptions of me, and being cast in a role.
I think of myself as someone who's trying to be a great songwriter and a great performer. And I mean really great.
One of my goals in making music is to make the world seem bigger, and life seem larger.
You have to make a character of yourself if you're going to be known to strangers.
I don't really worship the album 'Transformer.' It's not the best thing that Lou Reed has done.
We take a lot of inspiration from punk rock and early rock 'n' roll from the '50s and early '60s.
As children my grandparents were refugees. Eventually they got to the U.S. - in 1950 or something. They grew up as refugees. Their earliest memories are of living in a home with their family. It's in my blood, I guess, to have a fear about encouraging fascism.
If you get into really learning about the roots of monotheism, it was utterly a radical cultural moment. The Bible was so revolutionary and against all that came before it.
I could write a joke song really easily, but I think something that might be true for my generation is that there's a certain irony or detachedness expected of us, even though we really feel sincere. So the only way to sincerity is through a joke.
My main theme as a songwriter seems to be a feeling of homelessness, of being in motion. The feeling of being somehow unmoored, a radical internal freedom that is very painful and also joyful.
I want to be a force that tries to revive the human spirit rather than crush it, to open possibilities rather than close them down. Sometimes a passionate negativity is the best way to do that.
My bassist Jorgen Jorgensen opened up my life to a lot of great, obscure old soul records.
Learning that someone is gay, queer, trans, doesn't tell you much by itself. They could be any kind of person aside from that particular slice of identity.
Some part of me hopes for a guardian angel to protect me and other people who need protection.
My Jewishness and queerness are very interwoven, and, although they sometimes conflict culturally, intellectually and spiritually they deepen one another for me.
I'm a shy person whose very presence has become a confrontation. I think that's true of a lot of queer people.
I really don't care about what anyone says unless they are also gender-nonconforming. Then I really listen. I love the solidarity felt between us gender failures.
I wrote 'My Teeth Hurt' in April 2018 when my teeth hurt and I didn't have dental insurance.
A lot of bands break through with their third record: the White Stripes, the Clash, the Replacements.
I think most of the work of songwriting is thinking of great phrases - I'm addicted, always on the hunt for a really great phrase.
I was rather obsessed with angels.
We need a lot more visibility of queer people in public life. People gotta get used to it.
I get stage fright really bad sometimes, so touring has been hard on me in a lot of ways. But despite that, I love performing.
I'm interested in God. I'm not interested in religion for religion's sake.
I think I'm becoming a climate activist.
A repressed person overcoming their repression always makes good music.
I take it hard whenever anything happens that makes, I guess, queer people feel less safe and less welcome in the world.
I believe an authentic Judaism would legislate total equality for queer people.
I was pretty much into punk rock and that's all I cared about. I was into Green Day and the Ramones. I wanted to get a guitar so I could play punk songs because this kid taught me power chords at summer camp.
