“I can be staggeringly evangelical. That’s just my personality.”
― James Murphy
“Restaurants remind me of bands: there’s lots of camaraderie, people work very closely together, very hard, and it’s a bad job to pick if you want to make lots of money. Whether music or food, the reward always has to be because you love it.”
― James Murphy
“There are some people who are just plain great at making music. That’s not who I am.”
― James Murphy
“Punk rock, to me, was always outsiderness. When I first saw large-group-scene punk rock, I was repelled by it, because there were way too many people who agreed with each other.”
― James Murphy
“When I do a remix, I try to think about what I don’t have in my bag and create something to fill that gap.”
― James Murphy
“I actually want to write a treatise in defence of pretension. I think the word ‘pretension’ has become like the word ‘ironic’ – just this catch-all term to distance people from interesting experiences and cultural engagement and possible embarrassment.”
― James Murphy
“I am kind of, by definition, a hipster.”
― James Murphy
“I’m a DJ, and I live in Williamsburg, and I run an independent record company.”
― James Murphy
“I don’t drink beer, and I don’t drink at home.”
― James Murphy
“I’m an underdog by nature, and I like to be fighting. I don’t make music for myself. I make music to fight.”
― James Murphy
“I was a singing guitar player as a kid, and I found it really embarrassing, so I stopped singing and became a drummer.”
― James Murphy
“I was someone who grew up obsessed with bands, how they were and how they treated one another, and how they treated fans.”
― James Murphy
“I have a very toxic combination of being completely determined, inflexible, controlling and being totally shy, guilty at hurting anyone’s feelings, hypersensitive to other people’s needs – and it’s just paralysing.”
― James Murphy
“Even in the band I was in when I was a kid, I’d be telling everyone what to do. I’d be leaning over the drums, telling them to tune their guitars, micromanaging.”
― James Murphy
“As things mature – whether they be real estate, rock n’ roll, politics, festivals, radio – there’s an efficiency that develops, and with it, very often, comes some soul-crushing truths.”
― James Murphy
“I love rock. I love the music that was born out of the latter part of the 20th century. It means a lot to me.”
― James Murphy
“To do a band properly does kind of mean you don’t really get to do anything else.”
― James Murphy
“I’m not a big songwriter guy. People who are really good singer-songwriters usually left me kind of cold.”
― James Murphy
“My high-techness is pretty low-tech. I’m not wildly computer savvy. I’m a record person.”
― James Murphy
“I started playing in my first band when I was 12. I like to date myself by saying I was in a New Age band when it wasn’t ironic; it was actually called new wave because it was new.”
― James Murphy
“We didn’t set out to be cool. We set out to be an extremely tight band. We wanted to defy expectations. The more negative your mindset on coming to one of our gigs, the better for us, frankly.”
― James Murphy
“If being in a band was my job, then I would quit. This is not a good job. A good job is in financial management.”
― James Murphy
“I never did albums fully at DFA; I always would go someplace else so I wasn’t making a record in my office, basically.”
― James Murphy
“What we are as a live band is different to what we are on recordings, but they’re both equal versions: they’re both LCD Soundsystem, but in very different ways.”
― James Murphy
“Songs can click together really quickly, and other times, they’re really laborious and heavy-lifting.”
― James Murphy
“My gut instincts are strong, but they’re not always accessible to me, which is why I like DJing, because you don’t have time, and you have to go on instinct.”
― James Murphy
“One of the big things that broke the band up for me, which I’ve become much clearer on over the years, was that I had no desire to be famous.”
― James Murphy
“The vast majority of kids in my school went on to college. That’s just what you did. And I remember feeling like, ‘No, I’m not doing that.’ The idea that college was next, that it was a given, meant it was of no interest to me. So I didn’t go.”
― James Murphy
“I don’t want to be subsumed into popular culture and played on the radio next to some garbage music.”
― James Murphy
“I was into punk rock my whole life. I never listened to the Eagles. I never listened to things that were getting Grammys. So getting a Grammy nomination wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t meaningful.”
― James Murphy
“I’m always surprised by how optimistic and open sometimes people who are very successful are.”
― James Murphy
“I don’t prepare very well. I’m always sort of wrapped up in what I’m supposed to be doing in the moment, and then I suddenly appear someplace, and I’m really not prepared.”
― James Murphy
“There’s kind of a limitless amount of things I want to do, and when the path seems to open, that’s when I try to do a thing.”
― James Murphy
“If I opened a record store, it wouldn’t be all punk rock and esoterica.”
― James Murphy
“The more you are like me, the less interested in my band you are.”
― James Murphy
“I understand that if someone’s going to make me his idea of cool, I can’t control that.”
― James Murphy
“LCD is a band about a band writing music about writing music.”
― James Murphy
“LCD live was set up to be an argument about what’s wrong with bands and why bands should be better. I always thought that we were so obviously not a great band, comically not a great band. I was not a great front man.”
― James Murphy
“I’m basically a schlub.”
― James Murphy
“I have a thing about inane lyrics – the world doesn’t need them.”
― James Murphy
“I had friends who were jocks or whatever… Then, around 12 or 13, kids get cliquish and cruel, and that disgusted me. It seemed a reprehensible use of one’s arbitrary social status. So I got really aggressive about it and became more of a weird kid.”
― James Murphy
“I’ve always been a good imitator. I love music. But I’m just not that original.”
― James Murphy
“I spent a good amount of time with David Bowie, and I was talking about getting the band back together. He said, ‘Does it make you uncomfortable?’ I said ‘Yeah,’, and he said, ‘Good. It should. You should be uncomfortable.’”
― James Murphy
“If there was a direct influence on a song, I never hid it.”
― James Murphy
“Making people dance has another function that has nothing to do with art, and I mean that in the most positive way possible. It’s like food – if you’re not eating it, you’re doing something wrong. If they’re not dancing, something is wrong.”
― James Murphy
“The plan is to keep on putting out records until someone shows up and tells us to stop.”
― James Murphy
“One of the things that I think is special about DJing is creating this atmosphere of collectiveness, as if to say, ‘We’re all in this together.’”
― James Murphy
“I wouldn’t say I’m a friend of David Byrne, but I guess I’m an acquaintance. I’m obviously an admirer, and we’ve met, but we don’t call and chat about ‘Breaking Bad’ or anything.”
― James Murphy
“Those early years in New Jersey were amazing. We lived in a really small town with tons of kids my age. There were fields and woods and a creek – it was a pretty ideal place to be a little kid.”
― James Murphy
“I was always just blown away by David Bowie and how mannered the guy was willing to be. It was so far from what I imagined someone with my confidence to be capable of.”
― James Murphy
“I always wished I had a more flamboyant streak, but it’s just not what I’m made of.”
― James Murphy
“I moved to New York in 1989 and went to study at NYU.”
― James Murphy
“For most of my life, making music has cost me money. So I learned to live very, very cheaply.”
― James Murphy
“I got a phone message from Janet Jackson saying, ‘Hi, I love ‘Losing My Edge’, can you do me something funky and dirty like that?’ I can’t really do off-the-peg stuff, so I never called back.”
― James Murphy
“I don’t write off silly pop people at all, because you never know where they’re coming from.”
― James Murphy
“I like clever lyrics, funny lyrics, dumb lyrics. I can never put my finger on what I like about them.”
― James Murphy
“I’m generally a very optimistic guy.”
― James Murphy
“One of my favorite photographers is Ruvan Wijesooriya, who takes most of the LCD photos. His work is incredibly colloquial and raw.”
― James Murphy
“I don’t see myself as necessarily a very creative person. I’m a technical guy.”
― James Murphy
“I have an interest in everything, but I don’t have an interest in starting new careers.”
― James Murphy
“You can buy $20,000 speakers, but put them in a room that’s not right, and it sounds terrible. If you buy $20 speakers and put them in a room that’s tuned right, it’ll sound great.”
― James Murphy
“I suppose what happened is that I spent my whole life wanting to be cool but eventually came to recognise the mechanism of how coolness works. So it’s not really that I don’t want to be cool anymore – it’s more like I’ve come to realise that coolness doesn’t exist the way I once assumed.”
― James Murphy
“You can’t be afraid to embarrass yourself sometimes.”
― James Murphy
“DJing is really, really pleasant. It’s like having people over and making hors d’oeuvres.”
― James Murphy
“When I want to DJ what I think to be the best-sounding place in the world, I go to this place in Sapporo, Japan, called Precious Hall, which has kind of a custom sound system with a much lower ceiling and a smaller room.”
― James Murphy
“Producing is always really hard, and you can never tell who’s going to be easy to get along with and who’s going to be difficult.”
― James Murphy
“Ad Rock from the Beastie Boys gave me a present: it’s a boombox with a keyboard and a beatbox in it. You can’t make that up.”
― James Murphy
“When I was a kid, when the Walkman came out, I was sold. I listened to music 24 hours a day.”
― James Murphy
“Sound sounds are terrible in the city, but it’s great to listen and to walk and listen to people talk to each other. There are birds. You hear spring. I like listening to the city.”
― James Murphy
“I’m a very self-conscious person.”
― James Murphy
“I actually really love people.”
― James Murphy
“I write songs all the time. Sometimes they’re just weird songs I sing while changing a baby, or songs about annoying things that I sing to myself, or to friends while sitting at a bar, or about Christmas or New York.”
― James Murphy
“It’s strangely energizing to have people who don’t make music themselves take potshots at you from the Internet.”
― James Murphy
“To me, the band is like one of my homes, in fact. It’s not like, ‘I’ve got to get out of this band. I’ve got to go home.’ This band is home in a lot of ways. It’s my closest friends; it’s a place where I really feel comfortable and happy.”
― James Murphy
“’Somebody’s Calling Me’ was written in my sleep, and the original was just the piano and the beat and the singing.”
― James Murphy
“Titles are relatively arbitrary to me; they take on meanings that aren’t really my meanings. ‘Sound Of Silver’ was just, like, I made the studio silver, and I wanted the record to sound ‘more silver.’”
― James Murphy
“I’m really focused and obsessed with writing things that are specific. I don’t like big rock lyrics – I find them infuriating.”
― James Murphy
“Songs are songs, and to reduce them is to waste them.”
― James Murphy
“Making ‘Sound of Silver’ was very emotional at times, where I just hated making that record.”
― James Murphy
“I think that not being all that overwhelmed by good reviews is a luxury. I’m like a rich person who says he doesn’t care about money.”
― James Murphy
“Subway Symphony is a little idea I had to change the sound of the subway turnstiles into different pieces of music, depending on what station you’re entering.”
― James Murphy
“I’ve watched too many artists in my life forget how good the things they used to do were.”
― James Murphy
“I don’t have a TV, and I don’t have a radio.”
― James Murphy
“The Fall was super powerful to me because of their covers. They were intimidating. I bought ‘This Nation’s Saving Grace’ when it came out in 1985, and there was something about it that made me nervous. It terrified me.”
― James Murphy
“I miss producing. I hate it when I do it, but I love it.”
― James Murphy
“With a computer, you have access to so many drum sounds and samples that your snare drum will be unrelated harmonically to your kick drum.”
― James Murphy
“Anything that’s resolvable is boring, musically. And if it’s too chaotic, you don’t feel tension; it’s chaos.”
― James Murphy
“Warhol had resonance because it was high art and low art. And you could argue about it endlessly.”
― James Murphy
“There’s a difference between a cheap lie and a beautiful lie.”
― James Murphy
“When Andy Kaufman performed, he was not just trying to be funny. He was playing with the notion of what it means to try to be funny, of what it means to be an audience expecting somebody to be funny. He was doing a dance and playing a game.”
― James Murphy
“I think I’m designed to regret everything.”
― James Murphy
“I know it seems like LCD Soundsystem sold millions and millions of records, but we didn’t. I’m not a wealthy person.”
― James Murphy
“I’m kind of stunned by hip-hop and R&B’s embrace of what is essentially early-to-mid-Nineties Euro pop.”
― James Murphy
“I’ve been to Manchester enough to know it’s a real place. It’s not Factory Records and the Smiths bicycling around. I get it. It’s a modern city.”
― James Murphy
“A lot of the time, you compromise., which is fine – it’s part of not being totally insane.”
― James Murphy
“After being in a ‘professional rock ensemble,’ there’s a great joy in making music with friends, without any release plan.”
― James Murphy
“When given the opportunity to fail myself or fail someone else, I choose to fail myself.”
― James Murphy
“My personality is based on an anonymity and failure. Failure and anonymity, those are my strengths – superiority from below.”
― James Murphy
“I don’t think I’ve ever made a claim to startling originality.”
― James Murphy
“In my experience, people looking for progress aren’t actually looking to move things forward. They’re looking to be perceived in a certain way: as a forward thinker. It’s about vanity rather than any altruistic motives for the art.”
― James Murphy
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