Ryan Adams
American alt-country and rock singer-songwriter.
I quit drinking every night, at 1:30 A.M.
I've got maybe five or ten jean jackets with jeans. I can pack three to four pairs of denim jeans, five T-shirts, ten Western-style shirts, and two ties and just buy socks when I get there. That, a Walkman, two books, and some records, and I'm out the door for a year. Not a problem. Doesn't freak me out at all. Usually, if you're thinking about your clothes too much, you're probably not high enough.
I was doing soundcheck, and Rancid was playing over there. That's some good shit. Actually, it wasn't Rancid, it was the opening band, the Distillers. I was like, screaming and shit. Running around. I had no one to slam dance with. I was very lonesome. It was very singer-songwriter.
She's got the brown eyes, yeah, and they're pretty as hell,
And they'll burn through your shirt if you're holding her still.
She's got a lighter, and a lit cigarette,
And if you're making her smile, that's just as high as you can get.
I feel just like a map
Without a single place to go of interest
And I'm further north than south
If I could shut my mouth
She'd probably like this.
What happens is, people get a little taste of fame, and they get used to having things go that way, and the ego really kicks in. They'll do whatever it takes to stay there. They get addicted, and they make decisions that don't have anything to do with music. You get big like that, and people will maybe come and see you once. It never lasts. It's not real. I'll tell you this - it's fucking real behind a guitar.
And I'm tired of living here in this hotel,
Snow and the rain falling through the sheets.
In fact, I'm tired of 23rd Street.
Strung out like some Christmas lights
Out there in the Chelsea night.
They carved your name into a stone and then they put it in the ground.
I run my fingers through the grooves when no one's around,
Drink till I'm sick and I talk to myself in the dog days of the summer.
Then I feel you coming but I don't know how...
I would've held your mother's hand on the day you was born.
She runs through my veins like a long black river and rattles my cage like a thunderstorm.
Bring you down, can't bring you down
Bring you down, can't hear the sound
Run through the river and head to town
Pretty little moon with it's head hung down
Chin up. Cheer up.
Do you remember stormy winter?
Well button up your coat, one's comin' soon
Real. Real like a plastic bouquet
That thrives on the smoke from an old fireplace
And dies every night with her face on the news.
Nobody cries, they just smoke and stare and their shoes.
The only difference is,
The only difference is,
Nobody can cry -
It's hard to do
For most folks, without a reason why.
I'm sort of planting Post-It notes all over my psyche. Do not skateboard wasted. Do not buy $10,000 rugs. Be careful what you say to journalists. You don't have to stay up until 7 A.M. - tomorrow is a new day.
See her smiling at him? That used to be me, and I could find her in a thunderstorm just by the way that the rain would fall.
My lifestyle changed when this wonderful person came into my life. I couldn't sleep for years. All of a sudden, I don't know why or how, but I slept.
I should've died a hundred thousand times,
Teetering stoned off the side of a building.
Nobody loved me and nobody even tried
You can't hang on to something that won't stop moving.
Singing and dancing to them nighttime songs.
There's something in the way she eases my mind
And lays me across the bed till I close my eyes.
Stirs me in the morning till I can't ever be satisfied.
I leave Carolina every night in my dreams,
Like the girls that try to love me that I only leave.
Rock me like a baby doll and hold me to your chest,
But I'm always moving too fast.
Just a nobody girl
With a radar to the scene.
When the emptiness finds you
You find all the numbers you need.
You say you follow your heart
Well, honey, you're just being lost.
You could you follow your gut
But how much would it cost?
It's not very fashionable nowadays to have a philosophy that demands a lot of life. I tend to be drawn to people who are emotional - now they'd be called 'crazy'. Pollock, Jasper Johns, Toulouse-Lautrec. People said, 'They're off their nut!' Was Faulkner off his nut because he stayed in his house for eight months at a time writing books, and then you'd find him drunk up in a tree, making out with some old black woman? I think that's fuckin' great!
I want to make sure I'm with a girl that's a good kisser, and that when I wake up, I have coffee and a cigarette. That's all I really want out of life. That, and world domination.