Quotes by Musicians - Page 47

Music is where I feel loved. Past, present. Music is where I give love. Why do I continue to enter rooms of strangers who are suffering, dying, cursing, diminished, unwashed? Because of love. I don't see hollow faces, blank stares, decaying bodies. I see the faces of God in these human beings. Precious people with stories, contributions, presence. Music pays tribute to their lives, often coaxes out their life stories, gives them worth, but most of all loves them when they are lost, weak, vulnerable.
Robin Russell Gaiser
The boy will grow older, and over time there will be other songs – not many – ten or maybe twenty in a lifespan, that stand apar from the rest of the music he will discover. He will realise as he grows older still, and crosses the Canadian border and drives down into Seattle, that not only are these songs holy or sacred, they are hiding songs – what the Aztec Indians call carrion songs – that deal exclusively in darkness, obfuscation, concealment and secrecy. He will realize that, for him, the purpose of these songs has been to shut off the sun, to draw a long shadow down and protect him from the corrosive glare of the world.
Nick Cave
Her hair is troublesome and curly ... It falls in long, black strands, but each strand has a gentle, complicated undulation travelling through it, like a mild electric shock or a thrill, hat gives it a life of its own; it is visually analogous to a tremolo on a musical note.
Amit Chaudhuri
The dull pulse-like beat started at eleven o’clock at night. It was a new kind of music called ‘rap’. It baffled Ananda even more than disco. He had puzzled and puzzled over why people would want to listen and even move their bodies to an angry, insistent onrush of words – words that rhymed, apparently, but had no echo or afterlife. It was as if they were an extension of the body: never had words sounded so alarmingly physical, and pure physicality lacks empathy, it’s machine-like.
Amit Chaudhuri
Rock and Roll can never die.
Neil Young
And Goneville? It is a name that kept coming up as I was writing this book, and each time its meaning shifted a little. It's almost Gonville, the suburb of Whanganui where Johnny Devlin, New Zealand's first rock 'n'roll star, grew up, so arguably the birthplace of New Zealand rock 'n'roll. But it is also an imaginary place that might be every obscure New Zealand town that every obscure New Zealand band ever played.
Nick Bollinger
After reading someone you love, wait at least an hour before starting to write
Matty Healy
If you don't know the blues... there's no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music.
Keith Richards
If only I couldtfreeze this moment, this feeling, because righttnow, nothing else mattered. I was f***ing flying.
Tara Kelly
Nobody loves me but mama, and she may be jivin too.
B.B. King
I am not a fan of books.
Kanye West
You can take my heart, you can take my breath when you pry it from my cold, dead chest.
Skillet
...It is a well known fact that most artists produce their best work early in their career. They may refine what they do but you usually get the measure of what they are about on their first outing.
Bill Drummond
I may not believe in myself, but I believe in what I'm doing.
Jimmy Page
You will only be great at the things you love to do.Don't pursue a career in something you hate to do.
Dave Grohl
By the way, this tells you why Auto-Tuned vocals on many contemporary records sound so shallow and lifeless. It’s almost as if everything we learned from African American music during the twentieth century was thrown out the window by technologies in the twenty-first century. The goal should not be to sing every note dead center in the middle of the pitch---we escaped from that musical prison a hundred years ago. Why go back? In an odd sort of way, much of contemporary pop music resembles opera, with all the subtle shadings of bent notes and microtonal alterations abandoned in the quest for mathematically pure tones.
Ted Gioia
In every sphere of social interaction, that hermeneutic leap—that ability to put yourself in the mind frame of the other—is a virtue and a blessing.
Ted Gioia
When stealing from other players, an older musician wisely advised me, choose a different instrument from your own, and people won’t notice the theft.
Ted Gioia
I've probably been spit on more that any person alive outside of, I would say, a member of the prison system.
Iggy Pop
We have seen year after year the passion you have for music, and the way you have always been incredibly passionate fans, even though Hanson has not always been the coolest thing to be into.
Hanson
For the most basic assumption that dictated my early attempts to respond to creative music commentary was the mistaken belief that western journalists had some fundamental understanding of black creativity—or even western creativity—but this assumption was seriously in error.
Anthony Braxton
Accusing us of being a gimmick is a bit like accusing Jesus Christ of having ‘a bit of a messiah complex’. True, maybe, but when faced with the undeniable genius of what we put out, does that really still matter?
Gorillaz
It reset and mended my freshly damaged and distorted view of life, and made me recognize that this thing we call music, this primal expression that we reshape and refine and define ourselves with, is the gift I was given. The ability to communicate what others feel but cannot fully express, the passing down and around of songs and stories, from Pete Townshend to Joey Ramone to me, to the audiences who take the time and effort to support our work and give us a way to support ourselves -- I'm thinking this is what I am supposed to be doing.
Bob Mould
I knew it was coming. I knew they didn't have the nerve.Three days in and they've got faces like vexed tomatoes, their skins flaking sci-fi style: burnt to fuck. They were an embarrassment; not only to me and the wife and The Fall fans but to their own generation.
Mark E. Smith
Thousands of cars and a million guitarsScreaming with power in the air!We've found the place where the decibels raceThis army of rock will be thereTo ram it downRam it down!Straight to the heart of this town.Ram it down.Ram it down.Razing the place to the ground,Ram it down!
Rob Halford
You can't speak Music with notes alone, but you can speak Music without notes at all!
Victor L. Wooten
The Who got paid 4000 pounds during those days, but we always smashed our equipment that cost more than 5000 pounds.
Pete Townshend
I think my knowledge of music theory is rooted in jazz theory, and a lot of the writers of standards – Rodgers and Hart, and Gershwin.
Zooey Deschanel
Man, if you have to ask what it [jazz] is, you’ll never know.
Louis Armstrong
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
Thelonious Monk
Learning to read music in Braille & play by ear helped me develop a [very] good memory.
Ray Charles
Ever hear a song you love so much you wanna break sh*t?
Juliet Simms
Music itself was color-blind but the media and the radio stations segregate it based on their perceptions of the artists.
Anthony Kiedis
Out of sorrow entire worlds have been builtOut of longing great wonders have been willed
Nick Cave
You can go a hundred miles a second Don't have to drive no lousy cab Got everything you want and more man And the King picks up the tab You walk around on streets of gold all day And you never have to listen To what these customers say and I know...
Marc Cohn
When I'm on stage, I'm trying to do one thing: bring people joy. Just like church does. People don't go to church to find trouble, they go there to lose it.
James Brown
There's a stranger in a car Driving down your street Acts like he knows who you are Slaps his hand on the empty seat and says "Are you gonna get in Or are you gonna stay out?" Just a stranger in a car Might be the one they told you about Well you never were one for cautiousness You open the door He gives you a tender kiss And you can't even hear them no more --All the voices of choices Now only one road remains And strangers in a car Two hearts Two souls Tonight Two lanes You don't know where you're goin' You don't know what you're doin' Hell it might be the highway to heaven And it might be the road to ruin But this is a song For strangers in a car Baby maybe that's all We really are Strangers in a car (Driving down your street) Just strangers in a car (Driving down your street) Strangers in a car
Marc Cohn
You haven’t prepared yourself for worship if you just practice musical art
LaMar Boschman
It’s not the art, it’s the heart. What [God] reads during our worship is the inner attitude. Worship is spiritual; it’s organic; it’s relational.
LaMar Boschman
All we shared was a mattress, and a lie, and an addressBaby I don't need you, well baby I don't need youOnce occupied by a goddess, now it's a room full of boxesShe said, "it's time to leave you" but baby I don't need you! In a perfect world... her face would not existIn a perfect world... a broken heart is fixed
Billy Talent
Notes and chords have become my second language and, more often than not, that vocabulary expresses what I feel when language fails me. The guitar is my conscience, too - whenever I've lost my way, it's brought me back to center; whenever I forget, it reminds me why I'm here.
Slash
It was more like an abortion than music, but he got a wildly enthusiastic response from the crowd. Well, we're all pro-choice out here in Hillmont, after all.
Frank Portman
It's so funny being a Christian musician. It always scares me when people think so highly of Christian music, Contemporary Christian music especially. Because I kinda go, I know a lot of us, and we don't know jack about anything. Not that I don't want you to buy our records and come to our concerts. I sure do. But you should come for entertainment. If you really want spiritual nourishment, you should go to church...you should read the Scriptures.
Rich Mullins
I guess in this culture of ever-shortening attention spans, it's good if a song can lift us out of the madness, even if only for a few minutes.
Peter Bradley Adams
We all fall sometime, you're not the first. I know it hurts. In the end, you'll find what you deserve.
Alter Bridge
100% Reason to remember the name.
Fort Minor
Well, normally I’m against big things. I think the world is going to be saved by millions of small things. Too many things can go wrong when they get big.” — Pete Seeger (on how he felt about attending his big 90th birthday bash last year)
Pete Seeger
I don’t care if he hangs out with Skream/Benga or whoever,” he spat, “it’s just pure nonsense to ruin a hardcore genre with gay synths, chopped chipmunk vocals and cheesy poppy shit just so you can make a shitload of money and be an icon to a fanbase that consists of 13 year old wannabe dubheads and doesn’t know shit about music.
Skrillex
I believe that music is connected by human passions and curiosities rather than by marketing strategies.
Elvis Costello
We're not into music. We're into chaos.
Steve Jones
All these years the people said 'He’s acting like a kid.' He did not know he could not fly, so he did. Well he’s one of those that knows that life is just a leap of faith. So spread your arms, hold your breath and always trust your cape.
Guy Clark
The radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools tryin' to anesthetize the way that you feel.
Elvis Costello
I play chicken with the train
Cowboy Troy
There is no good singing, there is only present and absent.
Jeff Buckley
It is as though they simply cannot contemplate the notion of a short, slight man who dresses and moves like a popular (mis)conception of a homosexual being attractive to millions of women.
Dave Hill
You can't live life being second best.
Alex Trimble performed by Two Door Cinema Club
So cry if you need to, but I can't stay to watch you. That's the wrong thing to do. Touch if you need to, but I can't stay to hold you. That's the wrong thing to do.Talk if you need to, but I can't stay to hear you. That's the wrong thing to do. Cause you say you love me, and I'll end up lying and say I love you too.
Drake
Don't worry about the future, sooner or later it's the past. If they say the feeling's gone then it's time to take it back.
Meat Loaf
I like the smell of my Grandma's soap - I used to sit in the bath and eat it.
Carl Barât
Do you realize why is it I'm so driven to operate within the Establishment? It's vengeance. 'Hope I die before I get old' is something I still have to live with, but not for the reason many people think. I have to be very, very vigilant not to become one of those people I despised.
Pete Townshend