Daft Punk
On Money, Control, and Freedom
By Shaun Hatton - November 16th, 2009
I’ve been playing a lot of DJ Hero lately and getting into a lot of musicians that I really should have kept up with. Daft Punk, in particular, is a group whose music I liked in my early college years but I never got around to purchasing their follow-ups to Homework. Playing mixes of their music in DJ Hero has given me a new appreciation for the electronic duo, and their other records are now at the top of my “to buy myself” list this Christmas season.
While looking up information about them, I came across this poignant quote that I absolutely love:
“We’ve got much more control than money. You can’t get everything. We live in a society where money is what people want, so they can’t get the control. We chose. Control is freedom. People say we’re control freaks, but control is controlling your destiny without controlling other people. We’re not trying to manipulate other people, just controlling what we do ourselves. Controlling what we do is being free. People should stop thinking that an artist that controls what he does is a bad thing. A lot of artists today are just victims, not having control, and they’re not free. And that’s pathetic. If you start being dependent on money, then money has to reach a point to fit your expenses.”
— Thomas Bangalter, Daft Punk
Unfortunately the article sourced for this quote fell victim to Yahoo!’s redesign and site restructure. But this in no way diminishes how much I agree with it.
