Will Harvey
Will Harvey
Will Harveyis a software developer and Silicon Valley entrepreneur. At the age of 15 he wrote Music Construction Setfor the Apple II, the first commercial sheet music processor for home computers. Music Construction Set was ported to other systems by its publisher, Electronic Arts. He wrote two games for the Apple IIgs: Zany Golfand The Immortal. Harvey founded two consumer virtual world Internet companies: IMVU, an instant messaging company, and There, Inc., an MMOG company...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
CountryUnited States of America
Making me into a role model is placing too much importance on what I see as a work in progress.
I don't loathe interviews, I'm just one of those people who makes music because I find it difficult to talk.
I've always been very visceral in that I feel things very deeply.
With songs I almost see the images, see the action, and then all I have to do is describe it. It's almost like watching a scene from a film, and that's what I go about trying to catch in a song.
I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs. They all find their place in the world, but they all start off in the same place. I'm always painting and drawing as well, and it's an ongoing creative assignment.
I didn't know folk music growing up, no. It's something I've come to study, really, because I think there's so much to learn from traditional music in the sense of the way music began as a way of communication, the traveling storyteller, the bard, the minstrels.
People have a tendency to see country life through rose-colored glasses.
I firmly disbelieve that one has to be a tortured soul to write good music.
People like Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart - all of these artists were what I grew up listening to every day of my life. And there's a very healthy music scene in the west country of England, where I grew up.
I've always felt that I'm affected by the world, by the way we treat each other, by the way different countries treat each other.
I decide immediately if I like a person and if I do, then I'm myself, and if I don't, then I give nothing.
There's so much you can do with laying words on a bed of music. You can completely change their meaning with the type of music or the way they're sung.
I come from an art-school background, and I still feel that in my music, it's about exploration and challenging myself, about putting myself in a place that's frightening because I haven't been there before.
I'm not a writer where I feel particularly blessed by great inspiration every day. I don't. I have to work really hard at it to try and say the things I'm concerned with.