music quotes

I do like Burial; he’s so curiously clumsy, you can’t help but be moved. It’s so un-Hollywood, and the rhythms are so un-danceable.

It’s insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it’s assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It’s that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he’s telling you something about his own life. It’s so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!

Basically, I live to do gigs.

That’s why I hate to get started in these jam sessions. I’m always the last one to leave.

I sure lost my musical direction in Hollywood. My songs were the same conveyer belt mass production, just like most of my movies were.

I own a ’66 Jaguar. That’s the guitar I polish, and baby – I refuse to let anyone touch it when I jump into the crowd.

Rock ‚n‘ roll is ridiculous. It’s absurd. In the past, U2 was trying to duck that. Now we’re wrapping our arms around it and giving it a great big kiss.

‚Doo-wop‘ is a very special word for me. Because I grew up listening to my dad who, as a Fifties rock & roll head, loved doo-wop music.

If you hear Anarchy in the UK today your hair stands on end. It gives you the shivers.

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin‘ now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.

It’s not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on.

The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.

I can play a lot of different instruments adequately but nothing really well.

I learned how important it is to entertain people and give them a reason to come and watch you play.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

You know, my sister sings, my brother plays drums in my band. My whole family is a bunch of musicians.

Lyrics are the only thing to do with music that haven’t been made easier technically.

Rhythm is something you either have or don’t have, but when you have it, you have it all over.

My dad was into the 1950s doo-wop era. If you look at those groups, or at James Brown, Jackie Wilson and the Temptations in the 1960s, you’ll see you had to be sharp onstage.

Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing – ‚Oh, let’s put that sentence there, let’s get rid of this‘ – have become commonplace in films and music too.

I’m no hillbilly singer.

I listen to music that is of our time and I just get angry.

Man, that record came out and was real big in Memphis. They started playing it, and it got real big. Don’t know why-the lyrics had no meaning.

It’s so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio.

I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It’s still got the same strings on it.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

I would love to study guitar or trumpet.

If I heard someone else singing like me, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

Cause I’m a musician, I’m not really good at posing and being a model, like, modeling.