Quotes By David Johansen

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 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.

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.

When I'm sleeping I do a lot of living.

I listen to a lot of different kinds of music.

You try things on in life. You wear them for a while, and you see what's next.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

We thought that's the way you were supposed to be if you were in a rock 'n' roll band. Flamboyant.

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.

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've been tired since I was 15.

When I was a kid, I had some Charles Lloyd records.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.'