'We're not trying to take away the greatness that America is supposed to have, but we're playing it [ Star-Spangled Banner ] the way the air is in America today... The air is slightly static, isn't it?'

[Introducing a raw version version of The Queen live in England] 'In fact it'd sound better if you'd stand up, for your country, and your brother ... and start…

'Well, I might be living in the wrong time but I don't go by comparisons. I go by the truthfulness of the whole thing. Forget about comparing, it's the biggest…

'You can clap along if you want to, and if you don't, well, then fuck it.'

'My late mother used to say that it did not matter if you came to this country on the Mayflower or a slave ship, across the Rio Grande or through Ellis Island;…

And the star-spangled banner, oh long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

There can be no music without ideology. The old composers, whether they knew it or not, were upholding a political theory. Most of them, of course, were bolste…