A biography for Johnny Flynnhasn’t been written yet.
“Certain films should only be watched at 40,000 feet. Like, certain comedies and certain, uh, emotionally charged movies.”
“My guitar is a 1934 National Trojan. They call it a resonator, which is the guitar guys played in the honky-tonks before amplification. It's very loud. It's the type of guitar that Son House and Robert Johnson played.”
“I'm not a funny person.”
“My dad was an actor, and he made it all seem quite magical. It felt like a slightly subversive thing, telling stories, when all of my other friends' parents were builders or bank clerks. It's always seemed quite magical to me.”
“I did a lot of theater as a young actor in my early twenties, and my first few records really came from writing songs through the rehearsal processes.”
“Music always gets bumped until I have some time to get around to it.”
“I played trumpet for Noah and the Whale a couple of times.”
“I find it hugely exciting to be dealing with another writer's language.”
“I actually do bits of my writing in sort of incidental spaces - when I'm traveling on the Tube or on a bus. More often than not, it's a reaction to how you feel about something, and if you're sitting down and concentrating on, 'I must write something,' then you can't have a truthful reaction.”
“The pop industry is so well-practised at channelling young people's creative energy that I think it gets abused.”
“I had a series of jobs in the small fishing village in West Wales where my family lived when I was a teenager. I worked as a fisherman in the day, and then the skipper and his wife ran a small restaurant - she'd cook the fish he caught.”
“I just said, casually, 'You know, I passed up on auditioning for Einstein.' And my friend was like, 'You idiot, you have to do it!' She made me do it. I sent the tapes off assuming that somebody would say, 'Ha ha, very funny.'”
“I feel really lucky that I somehow have blagged my way into loads of different experiences. I find making a film fascinating, I find making a play amazing, and working with my band and scoring things... it's all really cool. I'm just a glutton for experience, really.”
“I'm not a fan of taking too long in the studio. I always do one vocal take and jump out of the control room, and people push me back in... It's a real turn-off to hear things that are too polished. I feel like I've almost fought for the right to be that kind of musician - we used to be on a major label, and now we're on an indie.”
“The thing I find really special in performance is that there is this slightly mystical thing that takes over when you're responding to a crowd and engaging in people's imaginations collectively in a room. I've always thought that one of the most incredible things about being alive is going to see some kind of performance like that.”
“We all have these shades in our nature: it's a spectrum within all of us.”
“I try and stay in my right brain as much as I can, but my left takes over.”
“I think everyone in their 30s looks back at their 20s and thinks, 'Oh God, if I'd just done this and this, and not done that.'”
“My thing about demos is that you usually prefer them to the finished thing.”
“Diane Cluck is part of the anti-folk movement in New York. She's got a really haunting voice, and she usually sings in the pentatonic scale.”