Quotes on Music

Music makes me high on stage, and that's the truth. It's like being almost addicted to music.

To me, music is a river. I have lived my life beside the river. Every day, I get up and look at the river. I watch it and notice when it rises and falls.

I try to make my music interesting to me first, then hopefully other people will find it interesting, too.

Especially girls, but any kids exposed to music programs and arts programs do much better on their tests. They have a better chance of going to college. They can focus better. You know, we're not just automatons learning how to work machines and do engineering and math and science. All of that's great, but you've got to build a whole person.

I think the hardest thing about making music now is being a great dad at the same time. There's an insanity that goes with writing - a mad scientist thing that you have to go through - and sacrificing a kid's upbringing to do that is not an option.

They didn't dictate to me as to what kind of music that they wanted me to play or what tunes, what musicians that I was going to use. They let me do my thing. That's one reason I stayed there for twenty-eight years.

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.

Anybody singing the blues is in a deep pit yelling for help.

Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music.

It's very strange how electronic music formatted itself and forgot that its roots are about the surprise, freedom, and the acceptance of every race, gender, and style of music into this big party. Instead, it started to become this electronic lifestyle which also involved the glorification of technology.

I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.

I cannot write in verse, for I am no poet. I cannot arrange the parts of speech with such art as to produce effects of light and shade, for I am no painter. Even by signs and gestures I cannot express my thoughts and feelings, for I am no dancer. But I can do so by means of sounds, for I am a musician.

I found that dance, music, and literature is how I made sense of the world... it pushed me to think of things bigger than life's daily routines... to think beyond what is immediate or convenient.

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

This has not changed: always like the first time, very, very nervous. But when the music begins, you are in the music, it's a sort of transformation. Your feeling for the music is greater and has nothing to do with your nerves. You go out of yourself.

Ultimately, to insist that rock criticism be political is first to insist that the humans who make and enjoy music are embroiled in politics whether they like it or not - and whether they know it or not.

When I have to score a film, I watch the movie first and then start thinking about it. And from that moment on, it is as if I were pregnant. I then have to deliver the child, so from that moment on, I think always about the music - even when I go to the grocery store, I think about it.

Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before.

I only knew classical music, which to me was the only true music. The only way I could survive at the bar was to mix the classical music with popular songs, and that meant I had to sing. What happened was that I discovered I had a voice plus the talent to mix classical music together with more popular songs, which at the time I detested.

You know how many men make music without biting each other's heads off? Why do we have to do that? There's room for everybody. I really couldn't care less what the next girl's doing. If she's shining, that's good. It's not taking away from my light.

One has to completely humiliate oneself to be what the Beatles were . . . . It happened bit by bit, until . . . you're doing exactly what you don't want to do with people you can't stand -- the people you hated when you were ten.