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" 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. "

Johnny Flynn

Control

Long

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" As a jobbing actor or musician, you have to take any work you can get. "

" We all have these shades in our nature: it's a spectrum within all of us. "

" It's great being an actor and being part of a play or a film where there's usually quite a big group of people who are collaborating, and your job is really to fit in and share that energy. With music, because I write the songs, it's a broader, more abstract process. "

" The truth is there's always a hum of people playing folk music in cities. "

" Folk music - and what people are now perceiving as being folk music - is music that's quite close to the ground. The songs sound quite old, even if they're new. They sound like they've been sung by different people for years. "

" I first came across Langhorne Slim when I saw him play live, and he's an incredibly infectious performer. The way he works the crowd is mind-blowing. You can listen to his music without really listening to his lyrics, but it pays off if you do. "

" My thing about demos is that you usually prefer them to the finished thing. "

" My dad was working class. "

" It's not in the mainstream media, but across towns, it is amazing how there are small groups of people getting together and forming artistic collectives - they may not be being overtly political, but I'd say by channelling their energy into community projects, that's a valid political statement. "

" 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. "

" Our job as actors is to invent the things that bridge ourselves with the characters, so you have to build something if it's not there - you try and learn what makes people behave in a certain way. "

" 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.' "

Johnny Flynn

Funny

Know

" Taking someone else's language and fitting it into your own speech - you learn a lot about other people's brains, doing that. "

" Not listening is the reason for so many misunderstandings and conflicts. "

" I take them both seriously - I don't particularly want to be an 'actor-musician.' I want to play the great challenging parts, to be right for the part, rather than just, 'Oh, he can play the fiddle.' "

Johnny Flynn

Seriously

Want

" I like the idea of letting the music do its own work and the stories being more expressionful - if that's a word - in people's imagination. I've just got a thing about people and songs telling you how you should feel. "

" I guess I started writing poetry and stuff and then decided to set it to music. "

" Music always gets bumped until I have some time to get around to it. "

" 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. "

" I'm not really interested in myself in my writing. I can't see myself in the songs, even though I know different parts of me are there. "

Johnny Flynn

Writing

Songs

" My father was an actor. Both of my older brothers are actors. My younger sister is an actress. For me, that's my job; that's my craft. But then all through school and through drama school, I was gigging and running nights and playing in bands, and I just didn't want to let that go. "

Johnny Flynn

Sister

Father

" There's something amazing about 'Fawlty Towers' and 'The Office' only being two series. I think, when you really nail it, you don't need to do more than two or three. "

" The pop industry is so well-practised at channelling young people's creative energy that I think it gets abused. "

" 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. "

" In my mind, there's usually a fairly definitive kind of narrative when I write. But I don't want to enforce that on other people. I think that's why I like using metaphor so much. "

" Bob Dylan has and Einstein had their own way of perceiving the universe and translating it for us. "

" I played trumpet for Noah and the Whale a couple of times. "

" You might as well acknowledge what came before, because you can never do something wholly new. It's not unoriginal to make your references clear. "

" The reason I stopped music for a while and concentrated on theatre was that it was more conducive to parenting; having the days free was quite handy. I love them both. I hope I don't have to compromise one for the other. "