David Geffen

What is the one thing that I could do to help you?

We all acquire damage as infants and children and we work on removing those scars all of our lives. You won’t heal everything, but what’s important is the work.

I’m not looking to be a personal manager.

There were no role models, there were no other people I knew who were dealing with the same issues that I was dealing with. I had no idea if this was a stage I was going through or not. But I go to the draft board in Brooklyn and I fill out the form and there was a question that said ‘Do you have homosexual tendencies?’ and I check yes. But where-ever I was on line I’d see people I went to high school with and I was afraid of anyone knowing this about me so I kept on falling back into line and falling back into line. If you said you had homosexual tendencies they sent you to a psychiatrist. He said ‘I see here you’ve checked the box?’ And I said ‘yup’. He said ‘So do you think you’d have a problem serving in the armed forces?’ I said well you know ‘So many men.’ And I was out of the service.

[On his mother] She certainly ran her own race… I thought my mother was nuts.

You can’t interview my brother!… We can call this thing off – right now!

People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around – the music and the ideas.

I think I could sing and shear a few sheep at the same time.

As far as being in the spotlight and under public scrutiny, a lot of that’s about how much you put yourself out there. It’s not like we go to every premiere and every celebrity function and every charity auction. We really just try to maintain our privacy and never let our public persona get out of hand.

A band’s only unique thing is its chemistry, especially if none of you are prodigious players or particularly handsome. The one thing you have is your uniqueness, so we hold on to that.

Of course, chicks keep popping up. When you’re in a hotel, a pretty young lady makes life bearable.

I try to just be grateful for what I have, and not [focus on] the things that I don’t have.

I have just been saying whatever the f**k I want. That’s always a breath of fresh air… everyone is so filtered these days. I’m just back to being reckless and being a Southside, Jamaica, Queens, New York rapper

His (Freddie Mercury) words got better quickly. There were some very overt lyrics. Don’t Stop Me Now is a good example. He was having a good time, and that was very much a cri de coeur. Some lyrics we wrote together like I’m Going Slightly Mad, which was funny. We had fun coming up with daft things, all those ridiculous phrases. I’d say it was Freddie’s actual musicality which was the cleverest thing of all, the notes, and his harmonic structure was quite brilliant. When he wrote The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke, on the second album, he was crossing sections of six-part harmonies, and I thought: “Bloody hell, that is tricky stuff.” Then there’s The March Of The Black Queen, which is almost like prog-rock, and so outrageously complicated that I can’t even remember the arrangement myself. When you write songs that complex, you have to work hard at it, and it did invoke a lot of head-scratching. But then he’d come up with Killer Queen or, later on, lots of simple things like Crazy Little Thing. He had it on all sides. Freddie evolved. I always called him ‘the man who invented himself’. I think the talent was innate, but he dug deep inside himself and forced it out. His determination was quite something.

I come from a very small island which is packed with people. I mean, jam-packed with people. I’ve lived a life which has been pretty much full up with ambition, ideas, stimulus, creativity, some negativity which I try and avoid.

I have talked to Debbie Hammond quite a bit, Jim Hammond’s wife, his widow. I’ve seen their kids. And last time we played Dallas, a lot of them came over. It’s hard for them to come see the show. It’s still hard.

If I go and try to watch a movie by myself I’ll be completely transfixed the whole time, concentrating one hundred percent. But if I’m with another person on a date or something, within two minutes I’ll be like ‘This is rubbish, this is rubbish. We should leave and do something else.’ I don’t really know why.

I realized what Led Zeppelin was about around the end of our first U.S. tour. We started off not even on the bill in Denver, and by the time we got to New York we were second to Iron Butterfly, and they didn’t want to go on!

[on Edward Cullen in ‘Twilight’] He’s a poet, and very deep and profound. He’s just extraordinarily troubled.

I have so much to talk about. I have so much to share. There are so many different emotions going on inside of me right now.

There’s something timeless and important about making people laugh, about being the right spot in their day.