As a halfway decent college DJ, I had been exposed to some great progressive stuff and always took pride in unearthing musical gems.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My musical education started in the limelight, because I found myself surrounded by real musicians, but after my career had taken off.
My musical influence is really from my father. He was a DJ in college. My parents met at New York University. So he listened to, you know, Motown, and he listened to Bob Dylan. He listened to Grateful Dead and Rolling Stones, but he also listened to reggae music. And he collected vinyl.
I was crazy for music as a high school kid and a college kid.
I felt I had an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of great soul musicians of the past, who made a lot of social and political commentary through their music.
During college I realized I had a music predisposition and really got involved in it. I started playing bass guitar. That was how I began to fit in.
I think early on in my career, I was heavily inspired by bands like Throbbing Gristle and Test Dept, and films of David Lynch, for example, where the soundscape plays a very important role in the listening experience.
I grew up with a wide range of music.
Folk rock was my real roots. I did a few gigs as a folk artist, in the style of Fairport Convention.
In a way, I'm lucky that I was never classically trained and never went to a music college. I'm just from a normal working class family and happened to get obsessed with music as a teenager.
I literally left school and went straight into music via art college for a year, and I've been so involved in my job of writing songs that the more actively involved part became channeled into standing on the stage and saying things that way.