A limo ride with Bono, chats with each of his U2 bandmates, country cutie Keith Urban sending yours truly a book with a note the day after our talk ... Indeed, 2009 proved to be one exceptional year of chinwags for music critic Jane Stevenson. Here's the best of what they had to say:
"I'd like to have a foursome with them!"
-- Lady Gaga on MuchMusic Video Awards hosts and fellow performers, The Jonas Brothers
"Jesus and the gays."
-- Lady Gaga on her style inspirations
"If I have to roll up a joint and have a beer in order to get (my audience) to really talk and listen to some real ideas -- then so be it."
-- Rapper Asher Roth, who espouses beer bongs, weed and naked girls in his breakthrough party anthem, I Love College
"It's amazing the amount of applause you can get for suggesting the ladies of these towns you are visiting are of loose morals. The weird thing is that it's the girls who are cheering."
-- Elvis Costello
"My life was Trainspotting for a while, remember that movie? THAT was my life ... and it was misery."
-- Hugh Dillon, formerly of the Headstones, and now a sober solo artist and actor
"To be honest with you, by the end, I was pretty much blacked out by noon -- really."
-- Creed singer Scott Stapp on his drug-alcohol mixture issues, which he has since conquered
"I'm not one for being fashionable or seen -- said the guy wearing a big mouse head."
-- Toronto electronica star Deadmau5 (pronounced Deadmouse), who performs in a custom-made, oversized mouse head
"It's good to be at almost the edge of ridiculousness, then venture into doing something creative."
-- Jack White of The White Stripes on recording with his second side band, The Dead Weather
"I've just been lucky in the body department, as long as you keep the legs out of it."
-- 65-year-old Roger Daltrey on his enviable physique
"I know Noel Gallagher and Liam Gallagher and they always say, 'Oh, man, we wish we were respected like you lads are,' and I think, 'God, I wish I had your millions, mate.' You can't win 'em all, can you?"
-- New Order/Joy Division bassist Peter Hook
"I don't even know why rock musicians should be getting paid more than doctors. It's just entertainment."
-- Pretenders frontwoman Chrissie Hynde
"Mr. President says to me, 'I didn't know your husband was Elvis Costello.' ...So it's pretty cool when the president is like, going, 'Oh, my God, your husband is Elvis Costello!' "
-- Diana Krall on her chat with U.S. President Barack Obama
"Some evenings it's like 80,000 people (and it doesn't bother you), and then some evenings it's like, 'F------ hell, it's 80,000 people.'"
-- Robbie Williams on his stage fright
"I buy a lot of
handbags. I could have bought a house if I hadn't bought all them
handbags."
-- British pop star Adele
"I started to feel maybe like I was a sports car that they were going to put a tarp on and take a tarp off any time they wanted to. So as an artist, I couldn't really do that."
-- J.D. Fortune on his split from INXS
"Mikey got thrown out of the band ruthlessly ... (Eddie and Alex Van Halen) just cut his throat and threw him out to the side of the road."
-- Sammy Hagar on the firing of Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony
"There's only a couple of other people I can really say that are in my pop field that are (working five nights a week) and that are in the grind. Otherwise, the rest of them are hawking mints and Pro-activ."
-- Katy Perry
"When Bono hears two notes together he hears a song complete. When anyone else hears two notes together, we hear a starting point."
-- Adam Clayton on Bono's hope there will be another U2 album sooner than later
"I wish I had been there! I would have jumped up there and said, 'Give me that microphone! Give that back to her!' "
-- Reba McEntire on Kanye West upstaging Taylor Swift during MTV Video Music Awards
"The first day we met, he was like, 'So what hours do you like to work?' And I was like, 'Friday.' "
-- Robbie Williams on working with noted British producer Trevor Horn
"She sings lines like, 'Bullied, suckered, pimped and patronized,' and makes it sound like a good idea."
-- Dave Gray on the vocal talent of Annie Lennox with whom he recorded the duet, Full Steam
"I hope everybody sells a million records and I sell a million-and-one."
-- 2008 American Idol winner David Cook on 2009 winner Kris Allen and runner-up Adam Lambert
"There were times during the process that I got a little bit irritable and frustrated. He did, too. It's not like I'm some 18-year-old."
-- Harry Connick Jr. on working with Clive Davis on his latest album
"Either you're going to be egotistical, because they're going to blow so much steam (up your you know what), or you're going to want to crawl in a hole and die."
-- Kelly Clarkson on not reading her own press
"Then we all went out to the pub, of course, and got a bit rat-arsed (drunk)."
-- Dolores O' Riordan on what she did after reuniting with her Cranberries in January in Dublin
"I think I've been lazy. I think I've done just as much as I need to make it work."
-- Jann Arden
"There's a reason why they call it anonymous. I don't want to sit and talk about AA in interviews."
-- Country singer Terri Clark, who has been sober for a year
"We get a script writer and they write the same old Carry On Keith lot because it's easy. Basically, they're all f------ lazy."
-- Roger Daltrey on his struggles to get a good script for his long-awaited Keith Moon bio-pic
"I hate to record. It is so tedious and repetitive. I never record anything over three times. They're songs! My God! They aren't cures for cancer. How long does it take to put a song together? It's a song!"
-- Soul singer Bettye LaVette
"(Bruce Allen) said, 'You need to let me manage you. Rumour on the street ... is that you're unmanageable.' And maybe I have been."
-- Jann Arden
"Malcolm is one of my all-time favourite rhythm guitar players. I think he's one of the greatest on the planet. And he never gets any props."
-- Keith Urban on AC/DC's Malcolm Young
"The ease and use of an mp3 and an iPod is all well and good and it's convenient and affordable. But without moving parts I think people are losing the beauty and the romance of music. It's becoming invisible."
-- Jack White, who is bringing vinyl back
"There was too much money and too much stupidity and too much excess. ... I certainly don't feel doom and gloom. I'm delighted that any industry can destroy itself with its own greed."
-- Chrissie Hynde on the record industry
