My dad was a blues musician around Dublin when I was a baby, so the only music I would listen to growing up was John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. It's music that feels like home to me.
I was essentially raised on blues music. My dad was a blues musician around Dublin when I was a baby, so the only music I would listen to growing up was John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. It's music that feels like home to me.
Varese, Apollinaire, Ezra Pound, Leger, Gleizes, Severini, Villon, Duchamp, Duchamp-Villon, Marie Laurencin, Cocteau and many others were to me household names in the literal sense - names of familiar figures around the house.
That's my gift. I let that negativity roll off me like water off a duck's back. If it's not positive, I didn't hear it. If you can overcome that, fights are easy.
So I went to the Chinese restaurant and this duck came up to me with a red.
I've spent so many years talking about lame ducks in the White House and Congress, and it's never occurred to me to find out what the heck it means. It turns out it's an old English hunting term - something about firing at a duck without quite killing it. In any case, the hobbled duck limps on, at a distinct disadvantage.
The thing about fashion - it's like ducks going quack, quack quack. It's being dictated from above, and it just makes me want to rebel against it.
I've got eighteen-year-old twins that need to go to college, so there's still a financial issue, but I could retire tomorrow and just count ducks by the side of the lake, and that would be just fine by me. I'm not a high-energy guy.
We had our wheat. We made our own olive oil. We made our wine. We had chickens, ducks; we had sheep, cows, milk. So I was raised in a very simple situation but understanding really food from the ground... the essence of food and the flavors. And those memories I took with me, and I think that they lingered on.
Like, when they say to me, 'Screamin' A.' - I'm the only dude on the air who's loud? I know plenty of white dudes who are screaming and going off. They're called passionate. I'm called loud.
I've known Woodley for nine-plus years, ten-plus years. We've worked out together plenty. He's one of the guys who used to slam me all around the place. I was at 155, he was at 170 pounds and he was just the wrestler that is a superpower. So that was one of the dudes that got my wrestling a little better from going with guys like that.
A lot of my female fans discovered me through the passion I have for bettering myself. Not to say the dudes don't, but my female fan-base is based off women who want to do better.
My grandmother was a huge western fan. She'd have me watch with her. 'Shane,' 'Bonanza,' 'Duel in the Sun,' I saw them all with her. I used to watch them until the TV turned to snow.
Little things about the Pilgrims surprised me. For instance, the fact that the first duel in America was fought at Plymouth by two teenaged boys over a girl. The life the Pilgrims led in Holland before coming to America also surprised me.
If I hadn't had the talent, the networks wouldn't have televised my fights. No one has made me; I made myself. I paid my dues.
Let me tell you something: I have members in my charter who, after paying their rent and house bills and taking care of their families, don't even have enough money left over to pay the fifteen dollars a week dues.
Whenever someone forces me to do something against my will, they're infringing upon my freedoms and my liberties. And that's what I think we're doing in Maine when we have fair share, which means that you are required to belong to a union, you're required to pay dues, but you don't want to participate.
I'd rather be onstage with a pig - a duet with Jennifer Lopez and me just ain't going to happen.
The main focus for me is not trying to find duet partners. It's about just making great songs. I want most of my album to be in my voice because it's my point of view.
I've played football with George Best, the greatest footballer that ever lived. That doesn't make me a footballer. And I've sung a duet with Pavarotti. That doesn't make me an opera singer. I can write and I have a story to tell, but I'm not going to make a career out of it.
