"This art form, and it is an art form, which winds up being tagged as blues, is largely made up of expressions so genuine that they come straight out without second- or third-draft revisions. There's a resonance that's magnetic, kind of a compelling entity of its own. Shemekia Copeland, her dad is also from Houston, and released a couple of regional hits under the name Johnny 'Clyde' Copeland. As teenagers when we had the garage band we attempted playing – and the word is attempted – his great record 'Down On Bending Knees'. Talk about compelling – that was a great record. 

Unknown to me, Shemekia recorded a ZZ Top song, 'Jesus Just Left Chicago'. Her people asked if I'd consider playing a guitar figure and I said I'd really enjoy it. She didn’t know that I treasured the work her dad gave us. I said, well what's this for? A single? ""Well, we think it'll be single-worthy, as part of an album."" An album? Well I gotta hear it."

"This isn’t exactly a studio release. It’s a live release from the very first two shows that Bruce did in England, recorded on November 18, 1975 at the Hammersmith Odeon in London. In attendance was Joe Strummer, Pete Townshend, and Peter Gabriel, to name a few. At this single concert, Joe decided he’d play a Fender Telecaster from then on, Peter Gabriel decided he’d leave Genesis and go solo, and Pete Townshend made a request for “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City"" (to which you can clearly hear Bruce say, “This is for Pete” in his thick-as-mud Jersey Shore accent). All of this at one show. All because Bruce and the band were on absolute fire on this night. It’s the single best concert I’ve ever heard in my life. So when someone says to me, “Bruce? The guy with the flag and his butt on the cover of that record from the '80?” I reply, “Yes. That Bruce, and this punk rocker too.” Start here."

"What I love most about this film is its scale, its claustrophobic shots, its intensely glamorous women coming in and out of a single room, and its acute exploration of a single woman’s downfall. We’re seeing a pattern here in these movies; I struggle with anxiety, I struggle with depression, I often feel crazy dealing with my own emotions and the emotions of others, and I am continually fascinated by cinematic representations of women dealing with the same things. Petra von Kant scrapes at the bottom of what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a successful woman, what it means to be a woman in love and have all of these things and yet feel worthless. It’s also about a life in fashion, which is something that I’ve lived. There’s just a tension in that film between interiority and exteriority, embodied so well by those hyper-stylized shots and the cinematography. The film articulates a very specifically feminine kind of anguish that Fassbinder captures so well."