Quotes from Zachary Cole Smith

My mom worked at [American] Vogue before I was born. She has always been fashion-minded. I grew up with original Yves Saint Laurent sketches on the wall in our house. A lot of that rubbed off on me.

Nobody really wanted to do that one European tour. For one, it was budgeted to lose money. They would've made something, but I would've lost a lot of money.

It's pretty easy to lose money on tour - most bands do on their first couple of tours. We're more established, but I think it was just poorly booked. It was a mess from the get-go.

Music is much more of a multimedia sort of thing than I expected.

Drugs are fine for you alone at home, but when it comes to being a family, which a band is, it just messes everything up.

I wouldn't say music is my passion, or my calling, or anything like that. I mean, I don't really believe in that kind of stuff. Life is a series of chance happenings, so I just fell into it.

I spent my life working before I started band. I worked construction, landscaping. I worked in kitchens, cleaned dishes. I worked demolition.

I am super-interested in fashion. I love being a person whose clothes get discussed. That makes it more interesting for me.

It's totally true: Ariel, Christopher Owens, me, and Courtney Love, all in Saint Laurent ads, all with the same haircut.

If I play Coachella, it's sponsored by a company - that's corporate, too. But we're playing it because we're getting paid and we want to be a part of the festival.

Obviously there's so much about me on the Internet that you can turn against me, and you can make me into any person you want.

Music is an opportunity to say every single thing that you want to say. People will pore over whatever you say and however you say it and, for me, it represents complete freedom of speech.

There's a lot of stuff that I've been through in my life in the past couple of months that I don't really want to share with people who are close to me, but I have no option if it's my art.

I'm glad that, despite everything, I was able to get work done and finish something. I never finish anything. So just being able to finish record and to make music is a great gift.

There's positive attention and there's negative attention - negative attention is easy, positive attention requires actual hard work.

I don't think fear necessarily is a core human emotion, but I do think fear of death is something that is at the core of every person's existence.

I think that when people download the record they're kind of missing out on part of the experience, because it's really meant to be an immersive experience.