Loudon Wainwright III Quotes & Sayings

I studied acting and there's certainly an element of performance. I think that the songs are in many ways written to be performed. I think about what it's going to be like to sing them on stage rather than what it's going to be like to have someone at home listening to them on a CD. I guess in that way there's a connection between my acting experience and the songwriting and the way the songs are written. — Loudon Wainwright III

I know that people don't listen to music much in the way when they'll put on a CD, sit down, have a drink or go on a car journey. People pick and choose and just listen to tracks. But when I make a record, I try to think about it as a 50 minute musical journey, so the mood is very important, as is the sequence of the songs. — Loudon Wainwright III

You always want to break away from your parents, and you always think, 'I'm never going to be like that guy.' What I've discovered is you kind of wind up becoming your parents, which is also a cliche in itself. My father, despite the fact that he's been dead for over 25 years, he's been a huge influence on me. — Loudon Wainwright III

Displaying a bland, even an eerie, disregard for what appeared to be the facts of the situation, he fell back on an old habit of looking ahead to the next defeat. — Loudon Wainwright III

I think I'm great. I mean, I might as well come out and say it. Like most people, I have an ego and I'm in show business, so you have to have kind of a healthy, conflagrated ego to a degree. On the other hand, I'm consumed, like a lot of people, with self-doubt and loathing and guilt. — Loudon Wainwright III

I was a smoker for years. Occasionally I slip and have a cigarette. Remarkably, my voice has held up. I'm grateful, obviously. But I don't gargle with honey and ground-up bird eggs. I have no secrets. — Loudon Wainwright III

Doomsday is quite within our reach, if we will only stretch for it. — Loudon Wainwright III

I guess I can be surprised I'm alive. I'm taking a little better care of myself than when I was a young person. My father died when he was 63. My mother made it to 74. My grandparents, God, they were dropping like flies. — Loudon Wainwright III

I don't claim to be a particularly good father. I'm flawed, let's say. I've certainly been affected by the experience of having kids ... trying to be a father, at least. It's an amazing process. It's like songwriting: it's a complete mystery to me. I don't understand it - but I've certainly written about it. — Loudon Wainwright III

If you're 28 and singing about being over the hill, you're pretending. When you're 67 and singing about it, you know what you're talking about. — Loudon Wainwright III

If I had five minutes to live, I don't think I'd be bothered singing a song. I'd be dead, so it won't really matter. I'd have a glass of wine and a cigarette. — Loudon Wainwright III

I don't write about anything I don't want to write about. I like to think I could write about anything pretty much that I chose to. I have been asked to write songs about specific things, and I've always been able to come up with the goods. — Loudon Wainwright III

When you start your career, you have to figure out a way to separate yourself from the pack. So I went for a kind of preppy, psycho-killer look: I had short hair, grey flannel pants, and a button-down shirt. I think it worked, because nobody else was looking that way at that time. — Loudon Wainwright III

It's nice when people say, 'God, I've been listening to you since 1963 or 1985, or whatever.' I appreciate anybody who goes out and buys music these days. — Loudon Wainwright III

My feeling is that, and I've been writing about my family over the years, although it might make them feel uncomfortable, people generally like to be written about. If I've written a song about the family, they enjoy being mentioned in the songs. Nobody's confronted me and said 'don't write any songs about me. — Loudon Wainwright III

I love failure. It's stuff that I'm thinking about all the time in my life, so it would make sense to me anyway to write about it. — Loudon Wainwright III

I hated the idea that I would be like my father. Which is one of the reasons I decided I didn't want to be a writer and wanted to be an actor instead. I wanted to go in a total different direction. But, of course, I ended up being a writer anyway. — Loudon Wainwright III

Family life is tough, I'll say that for it. But in my case, I've mined the family. In a sense, I've used it. I've used what happened - the different events, the births of children, birthdays. Connecting, not connecting. Regret, shame, guilt. I mean, they're all in the songs. And love, too, I hasten to add. — Loudon Wainwright III

When a parent dies, the whole house of cards comes down. — Loudon Wainwright III

When my mother died, and when my father died, it's big. Our parents are giants; they're titans of our lives, so of course it's going to be a big deal. — Loudon Wainwright III

When you start performing, you realize that you have to separate yourself from the pack. So I would never wear bell-bottoms, which everybody else was wearing. I had short hair - and to see a 21-year-old guy walk onstage without longish hair was, in itself, weird. Every entertainer needs a shtick. — Loudon Wainwright III

It's hard for the modern generation to understand Thoreau, who lived beside a pond but didn't own water skis or a snorkel. — Loudon Wainwright III

I have travelled and been pretty much a one man operation for most of my career, and I think it'll continue to be that way. — Loudon Wainwright III

Who was that fatman buried in your place? Just another imitator, plastic surgeons did his face. — Loudon Wainwright III

My music comes from country music. Merle Haggard is God, and I do believe that. I'm not too tuned in to country music. I don't know who Brooks and Dunn are. I like Shania Twain, though! — Loudon Wainwright III

Why kill good people just to get a bad man? — Loudon Wainwright III

As it turns out, three of my four kids are professional singers. And they're really interesting, good singers. — Loudon Wainwright III

I'm always asked if the songs that I write are therapeutic, and my answer is a quick no. In fact, it could be argued that they exacerbate my neurosis. — Loudon Wainwright III

The big things in the average person's life are the romances that they have - and then the destruction and loss of them. Parents, siblings, children, the death of parents, family tension ... these are monumental things. They struck me as being interesting to write about. I didn't have a very exotic life, but all this stuff happened to me. — Loudon Wainwright III

I think I'm the oldest new Bob Dylan around. I predate Bruce Springsteen, Steve Forbat and John Prine. I was probably the first of the new Bob Dylans. — Loudon Wainwright III

I've never really suffered complete and utter writer's block, really. I equate it with sex: in the beginning of my career, I was writing five songs a week; now, I occasionally write a song. But it's an exciting moment when it happens! — Loudon Wainwright III

I've been writing about growing old for some time, really from the beginning of my career. It's something I'm apparently hung up about and now that I am old, hopefully I speak about it with some authority. — Loudon Wainwright III

I don't think of myself as a folk singer per se, but I really like blues and string-band music. When I started listening to records when I was a teenager, the folk boom was going on. — Loudon Wainwright III

When you have a song on the radio your career and your life changes maybe for the better and maybe for the not so good ... depending on how it's going that day. — Loudon Wainwright III

I had a hip replacement a couple of years ago. I have a song about that. And why wouldn't you? It strikes me that that was a huge event. It's kind of funny and horrible and interesting, so why wouldn't one write about that? — Loudon Wainwright III

When you make a record, you listen to it literally hundreds of times. When it's done and you can't do anything else, I never listen to my records. — Loudon Wainwright III

Geoff Muldaur was and is one of my musical heroes. When I listen to him sing and play, I can hear the coal mine, the cotton field, and last, but certainly foremost, the boy's boarding school. — Loudon Wainwright III

Los Angeles, the sun shines a lot, and it's blue, and there's palm trees; it's a bit like Sydney, I guess, but the underbelly is a vicious, mean, cruel, awful place. — Loudon Wainwright III

I always wanted to be an actor, even as a little kid. So I went to drama school in the late '60s at Carnegie Mellon. — Loudon Wainwright III

I wasn't in a lot of rock and roll bands. I was in jug bands and things when I was in school. — Loudon Wainwright III

After a war, after a concentration camp, I find it's not too difficult to be happy. — Loudon Wainwright III