Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best Musicians Quotes from famous authors such as Kevin Systrom, Yael Naim, James Taylor, J Balvin, Daniel Hope. Let’s look at these pieces of wisdom. We definitely have something to learn from them!
1
Brands, musicians, and public figures were among the first to embrace video on ‘Instagram’, and we’ve been impressed with how brands have extended their reach with video ads.
2
Being from Israel and a Jew is complex already, but with France, there is a freedom and a mix of culture. I have met musicians from all over the world.
3
I’m glad about what’s happening to the music business. This last crop of people we had in the 90s, who are going away now, they didn’t like music. They didn’t trust musicians. They wanted something else from it.
4
I pay a lot of attention to the people I let surround me. I learn something from those people and from everyone – from other musicians, from people on the street.
5
Intense study with Indian musicians such as Gaurav Majumdar and Zakir Hussain has inspired me to rethink my view of instrumental sound.
6
I do value the respect I get from my contemporaries, but to have Oasis cover my song, to have Puff Daddy cover a song, to have Goldie come along to my gigs – that’s where my ego is at. To have my fellow musicians like what I do, that’s very cool.
7
The town I grew up in, there were no musicians to play with; it was just me. The town I grew up in, there was two shops: like, a paper shop that sells confectionery, sweets and stuff, and, like, a farm supplies and a petrol station. That was literally it.
8
If we perform the romantic repertoire we need more musicians.
9
As musicians, and as people who sell material for people to hear and absorb, it’s important that we use that voice wisely.
10
We’re passionate musicians, but we felt classical concerts were more like a funeral because nobody talked and everybody was dressed so conservatively. We thought that’s kind of strange, because music is full of life! We thought we could break through that barrier with theater and comedy elements.
11
In New Orleans, people are still influenced by one another. You got these bands that play every week on Frenchmen Street, and on their breaks, they might go see the reggae band that’s right next door. You might get the musicians from the reggae band to sit in with the brass musicians. Everyone is having fun.
12
I love live performance and have huge admiration for people who can really do it. It’s the same with music: I’ll play a record and think that I’m not really into country or ragga. But, if it’s live and the musicians are good, I’ll listen to pretty much anything.
13
Wyclef is a musician that tried to unite as many musicians at once as possible. I am trying to be successful at that. The greatest challenge is that, I just got arrested for protesting in NYC for cutting the school budgets… And I think that it’s important to stand up. Schools are important.
14
I don’t think I can speak of the achievements of Indian cinema because it’s so large next to me. It’s not stopping. It’s ever-growing. We are going towards the right direction. We are evolving as a filmmaking industry as actors, directors, producers, singers, musicians. Everybody just pushing the boundaries.
15
Musicians from the beginning of time have been there to express the mood and the musical feelings in the air for whatever’s going on in that particular culture. It’s the greatest joy as a musician to be able to translate that, be part of something and watch the scenery around you.
16
Like most musicians, I’m good at becoming immersed in the music that I am currently working on. We seldom lift up our heads to contemplate even the music we will be doing in the future, let alone what we’ve done in the past.
17
I have a feeling a lot of the records I grew up listening to and the records I still like, as hard as musicians worked making them, I feel like they were really enjoying what they were going through. They weren’t just going through the process. You can tell that with certain things that you listen to.
18
What I can say is that for may years jazz musicians had to go to Europe, for instance, to be respected and to be sort of treated not in a discriminatory way. I don’t think there is anything controversial about me saying that. This is just a fact.
19
You should play with real musicians; the best music comes from real people interacting with each other.
20
My family is full of musicians, and a couple of times a year we get together and jam at my cousin’s studio. We improvise and have a great time.
21
Musicians are also interpretive artists and we are just as creative as painters and writers. We interpret in a way that expresses ourselves.
22
With El Sistema, you can create orchestras everywhere; then they can decide whether they want to become professional musicians. The aim is not only to create musicians, but to create people.
23
Kansas City, I would say, did more for jazz music, black music, than any other influence at all. Almost all their joints that they had there, they used black bands. Most musicians who amounted to anything, they would flock to Kansas City because that’s the place where jobs were plentiful.
24
Actors want to be musicians, and musicians want to be baseball players.
25
Passionate musicians only come from passionate five-year-olds.
26
Although my dad was a doctor, we weren’t necessarily a super-artsy family. We were just a classic, traditional family who got to take a lot of piano lessons and became a bunch of musicians.
27
The Doors were never that good as musicians.
28
When we came into the studio I became more and more me, making the tracks and choosing the musicians, partly because a great deal of the time during Bridge, Artie wasn’t there.
29
I can’t even imagine how it must be to be a solo artist playing with session musicians.
30
Cheech and I used to call ourselves musicians; we never called ourselves comedians. We were musicians that were funny.
31
My father was the proprietor of a music shop on Forty-third Street, where many of the finest performers and musicians of the day would come to shop. He knew the classical repertoire inside out.
32
I’m a comedian, and the other comedians are played by comedians, the same way that in ‘Once’ there are the musicians that hang out together.
33
Success breeds volume, and it’s just amazing how many young writers, artists, and musicians there are in town.
34
People don’t want their actors acting like musicians.
35
Increasingly I think of myself as some strange and solitary conductor, introduced to a group of very dynamic musicians who happen to be my characters, and I have no idea how they are going to play together, and I have certainly no idea how I am going to put manners on them.
36
In 1972, I got my first electric bass and started playing the kind of instrument I play now. I found that the majority of musicians couldn’t bear that. They are not used to listening to the bass because they think the bass is in the background to support them.
37
I’m fortunate I have this coterie of musicians around me to help take music to next level. Being surrounded by so much creative energy, so many creative people really feeds that creativity in me.
38
For me, actresses are constantly chameleons, and so they are taking a backseat to their own personality. I don’t feel like we’re trying to show off their personality as much as let them be a blank slate. It’s precisely the reason why I dress more musicians than I do actresses.
39
I grew up with all these old jazz guys in the ’70s in L.A., and they grew up idolizing Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Lester Young – all of these incredible musicians.
40
Even the greatest musicians, they only represent themselves. You represent who you are and what your experiences are and what you have in your heart, and it’s the same for me. I represent who I am and what I’ve been through and what I’m bringing to the music.
41
Texas is a hotbed of insanely good bands and musicians.
42
We spent a month in LA using a pool of musicians, a string arranger called Benjamin Wright, some great backing singers, and it gave tracks like Dynamite, which was written there, that kind of flavour.
43
You’ll almost encounter a superstition amongst musicians, people sort of go through strange rituals, what they need to do to write a song.
44
Music truly heals, and I am so grateful to have learned that through Musicians on Call.
45
I’ve always written about people who have very abstracted in a certain way. I write about scientists and artists and musicians. I write about people who live in their heads who are very obsessed about a certain set of details in the physical world.
46
I claimed identity as Jewish musicians for political reasons, because most of us were touring in Germany and, at this time, twelve years ago, there was a strong resurgence of Nazism in the places we were touring and part of that was on the music scene.
47
I come from a town of great musicians: Washington, D.C. It’s no joke, that history.
48
Like many musicians, I don’t look back much… only concentrate on what music I’m doing, and occasionally look ahead.
49
A lot of musicians aren’t proud; they’ll do other work, just to be able to play music. I guess that’s the way it’s always going to be – musicians will have to suffer to a certain degree in order to obtain their outlet.
50
I think there are just a million interviews in anthologies with famous musicians that are about the music, and they’re really boring to read.
51
If you’re 100% yourself, then you’re going to be different no matter what. I have this self-honesty approach as opposed to an ego that a lot of musicians put up. I can be myself, and that’s just enough to stand out.
52
Not with the Rochester Philharmonic, but I formed my own orchestra, made up of musicians from the Eastman School, where I’m on the faculty now, direct the Jazz Ensemble and teach improvisation classes.
53
But between sets I’d sneak over to the black places to hear blues musicians. It got to the point where I was making my living at white clubs and having my fun at the other places.
54
There’s a reason I moved to NYC, and if I listed all the musicians on my list you’d grow weary.
55
Same with anyone who’s been flying for years and loves it still… we’re part of a world we deeply love. Just as musicians feel about scores and melodies, dancers about the steps and flow of music, so we’re one with the principle of flight, the magic of being aloft in the wind!
56
We’re musicians. We make music for a living. It’s that simple. Nothing else matters.
57
Broadcast radio was entering its own golden age during the Depression, with live programming on stations all through the day. Local stations needed singers, musicians, announcers, and whipcord personalities, along with Christian clergy to give prayers and pundits to speak on world affairs.
58
Some musicians I know are incredible fathers. Like Keith Richards. A fantastic dad.
59
People don’t understand real musicians anymore. Jack White is great – he’s the real thing – but he isn’t having hits.
60
My training as an engineer has enabled me to design the stuff, but the reason I do it is not to make music but for the opportunity to work with musicians.
61
Artists – musicians, painters, writers, poets – always seem to have had the most accurate perception of what is really going on around them, not the official version or the popular perception of contemporary life.
62
What Spotify pays me is not even enough to pay the musicians playing with me or the people working on the discs. It’s not working. Something is going to have to give.
63
I don’t try to make 15 musicians sound like two each.
64
I don’t listen to music, actually. Obviously I go to clubs; I stand in elevators; a lot of my friends are musicians; I hear music all the time. But I don’t have my own collection of music.
65
I remember once, we got an interview, and he said, ‘Dad, these people are writing about me like I’m an adult. Don’t they know I’m a kid?’ I have never tried to encourage him to get a music image like other musicians have.
66
And I’m always interested when other musicians are trying to discover new worlds of sound.
67
Well, in Japan, I have got a group of musicians that I have worked with a lot, that concentrate just on the hardcore stuff, say, that Naked City has been working on. We have like a repertoire of sixty songs now.
68
And I think musicians can better run this state than politicians. And, hell, beauticians can better run the state than politicians.
69
I was lucky enough to first meet Elvis at his house in Bel Air and he used to invite different artists, singers and musicians, to come and jam with him at his house.
70
I’m a great believer that actors are very similar to session musicians. You wouldn’t ask a session musician, ‘How do you play jazz,’ and then, ‘How do you play classical?’ They just do it, because if they don’t do it, they don’t eat.
71
By and large musicians are pretty lazy; they don’t do a whole lot. They’re usually very busy doing nothing.
72
The pop musicians often leave meaning in the dust and substitute it for cartoons. The deeper artists – the grunge artists in the world and the emoticon people – tend to leave all of the happiness out of life like it just doesn’t exist.
73
All artists deserve compensation for their work, including musicians.
74
I don’t know if you have ever seen the Woody Allen film ‘Annie Hall,’ but it is, in a way, to Los Angeles and ‘Hollywood’ what ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ is to many musicians.
75
Well that’s probably what’ll end up happening: a load of really good musicians who can’t afford to be in bands, who have to have day jobs, you know what I mean? And then that’s when you start losing a lot of the live touring bands.
76
I am getting to work with some good musicians, artistes, and composers.
77
My great inspiration has always been Studs Terkel, who is a wonderful American oral historian. He was a radio DJ at first, interviewed a lot of jazz musicians, and at some point started to interview Americans about work.
78
In Berlin I especially enjoyed the orchestral concerts, and I attended a large number of them. I formed the acquaintance of a good many musicians, several of whom spoke of my playing in high terms.
79
Thelonious Monk was one of the musicians I most connected with early on. I’m a huge Betty Carter fan, and the way that Abbey Lincoln and Shirley Horn grew immensely from the time they were young is so inspirational.
80
Rob Thomas, the Action Bronson and the Riff Raff. Both the musicians, they know who I am and they know I come from oldest country in the world and if I want my words like the music. I forever love them like the Frank Sinatra.
81
I tried to give my career a shot from Barranquilla, but the musicians would never show up. It was just not taken seriously.
82
Lately, I’m spending more and more time working with non-rock musicians and leaving the mainstream – almost dissolving into another world, musically.
83
I would practice while listening to records or learn from musicians who were better than I was.
84
I think the world is very much embracing this whole concept of musicians going out and playing their instruments and playing music for music as opposed to music that has something to do with some form of image or imagery.
85
One of the things that’s influenced me musically was my experience at Brown University. I was surrounded by musicians that I really admired, and felt challenged to come up with music, lyrics, and recordings that stood up to the expectations of those musicians and myself.
86
A lot of musicians have a tough time hearing what we’re doing in a trio format.
87
All it takes to become president is money and a certain kind of power. Being president is the first thing I can shoot for, not the highest. It may come to a point where people take rock and roll musicians more seriously than they take politicians. It may eventually turn out that musicians have more credibility.
88
I get asked, ‘Who would you really like to work with?’ I’m already working with them. Smart, talented, funny people, good musicians, an extended family, good friends.
89
I’d request politicians to stop diverting attention from the actual issues that affect the country. Please stop resorting to soft targets like singers and musicians as scapegoats.
90
YouTube provides a unique opportunity for all musicians to market and promote their music and directly engage their fans.
91
Every musical movement that is big enough has to produce some good musicians who wouldn’t have had the incentive to start playing without it.
92
At the risk of sounding hopelessly romantic, love is the key element. I really love to play with different musicians who come from different cultural backgrounds.
93
My favorite band is Yes. They are all phenomenal musicians, and yes, this means I’m subject to ridicule from co-workers and occasionally from my wife, three kids, and even our Labradoodle pup.
94
There are only so many letters in the alphabet. When I talk to young musicians or authors and they ask for advice, I say, ‘You gotta learn all the letters of your own personal alphabet. With music, you need to know all the different kinds of music and everything in and around your given instrument.’
95
Musicians and journalists are the canaries in the coalmine, but, eventually, as computers get more and more powerful, it will kill off all middle-class professions.
96
Reps once took chances on art, History’s most treasured musicians were believed in and cultivated to reach their potential. Today, it would be difficult for those musicians to get deals.
97
The Blues scene now is international. In the ’50s it was purely something that you would hear in black clubs, played by black musicians, especially in America. But from the ’60s onwards it changed.
98
If our history can challenge the next wave of musicians to keep moving and changing, to keep spiritually hungry and horny, that’s what it’s all about.
99
Musicians have always adopted Macs.
100
I’ve always thought that actors wanted to be pop musicians and pop musicians wanted to be actors.
101
I’m one of the people who was a pioneer in encouraging musicians, early in the game, to get interested in technology, and now all the musicians are getting into it.
102
I know girls like musicians!
103
Country music’s always had the best musicians in any format of music, and I always gravitated toward that, stuff that was musically interesting.
104
I think my biggest musical hero growing up was probably Ian MacKaye. He set a great example for all of us local musicians. Still, to this day, I see him as the best example of a right-on musician.
105
Human nature is not amenable to prediction based on the trends or tendencies prevailing at the time. It is amenable to startling creativity of the kind practiced by great artists, directors, writers, musicians, actors, who know how to touch a chord in humans everywhere.
106
The musicians I respected were much older than me. I expected them to cut my head, and they did.
107
Yes, I would loved to have just sustained myself through my art, but less than one in a billion musicians gets that life. So rather than being like, ‘I’m an exception!’, like a moron, I thought I’d get a real job.
108
We’ve shown everyone we are musicians first and foremost: we’ll produce our own albums and play The 100 Club. We earned people’s respect. We’re not the band on MTV, wearing a bunch of makeup. We’ve proved we’re the real deal.
109
My family were symphonic musicians and in the opera. Also, it was my era, the love of radio. We used to listen to the radio at night, close our eyes and see movies far more beautiful than you can photograph.
110
I’m sure there’s a subconscious ‘go for it’ thing with turning 50. You want to do as much as possible and there are thoughts of how little time we have on the planet. For a lot of musicians in their 50s, the best days are behind them. I’d like to try and show that there is a future.
111
Something I’ve learned being in this industry for so long is that if you want to work with somebody, call them up. Very few musicians have any illusions about genre boundaries. They are useful descriptive terms, but they don’t really bind musicians.
112
My parents were both very musically inclined, they were both songwriters and musicians, so we grew up in the house singing music together, and R&B had a huge strong arm in the foundation of my career.
113
Many classical musicians lack pulse and rhythmical strength and precision, so for us it was very important to acquire and learn those.
114
With pop music and pop musicians, you know everything about everyone all the time, particularly their physical appearance. With female musicians, that’s made a big thing of, and I think people, certainly with me, have appreciated a bit of mystery.
115
Musicians don’t retire; they stop when there’s no more music in them.
116
Jazz scares me. I’ve witnessed so many incredible singers and jazz musicians. Pop and soul music have always been the things that I felt like I could do.
117
I think most musicians do like to have a laugh.
118
The funny thing is musicians often love to go to see visual art because you’ve got all these pictures to turn into metaphors.
119
Musicians are probably the most uncomfortable people in themselves in the world. Happiness, I think, only exists when you’re a child and once you go past 11, unfortunately it’s gone.
120
I’m envious of writers and musicians. I think it must be so difficult. Not just the frustration, but the discipline.
121
The moment I moved to New York City to study fashion, I met and became friends with people not only involved in fashion but in all the arts. It’s quite fluid with so many types of artists, designers, and musicians who know each other through collaborations or friends of friends.
122
I’ve played in bands myself, and sat on the floor photographing some of the greatest bands in the world while they rehearse. What’s always struck me is how different the sensory, especially auditory, experience is when you’re in the middle of the music with the musicians playing off each other around you.
123
France has always had a special place for Apple. This is the best place to discover and chat with all musicians, graphic designers, designers, or photographers who use our products. There is such creative energy.
124
Sometimes, musicians worry too much about how beautifully they are playing.
125
The art music of the West has developed through out its history by means of individual geniuses, and out of the soil supporting them; non-Western musicians were born, and grew like the grasses of the field.
126
I have lots of friends who are musicians and it is such a huge victory to survive in music, period – but if you get sick or injured and don’t have the kind of coverage we get in Canada, you are doomed.
127
I mean, look how many musicians have come through and played beside me, and I’m workin’ and they’re not.
128
In chamber music, the audience can hear each instrument and understand (and feel) what the composer and the musicians have in mind as they play.
129
One of the things that’s clear to me from interviews that I’ve read is that the more popular successful jazz musicians had audiences above and beyond the music community.
130
It’s my fault in many cases because I don’t initiate the contact to talk with a lot of other musicians.
131
Both of my parents were musicians.
132
My father used to tell me about how musicians don’t have respect from people and he was afraid about my future.
133
Gifted women musicians and composers rarely received their due.
134
For me, great jazz records really feel like everyone in the room is playing together in a zone – and all the musicians are completely in sync with each other.
135
It’s a weird thing where, especially in jazz, you have to totally mention cutting sessions and people one-upping each other and people being super, super tough on each other. And out of it emerge these genius musicians.
136
My father was a painter. There was a lot of singing. We hung around with a lot of folk musicians. My family knew a lot of great folk musicians of the time, like Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, Leadbelly. They were all people we knew.
137
We all feel love, and that might sound kind of corny, but I really feel that’s what joins musicians together around the world.
138
For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.
139
Imagine if you grew up in a place where your lineage was there for a hundred years, and part of the culture was to play music 50 percent of the time. You’d probably have a lot of musicians in your family too.
140
I actually started playing in little cafes around New York, and I have a lot of good friends of mine who are musicians who are struggling in New York.
141
I don’t like that, because there are a lot of people whose works I admire as actors or actresses, or musicians. And you know, I’ve been a big fan of different musicians or actors.
142
In music, the Specials brought a city, Coventry, bombed out for a second time and riven with racism, to a celebration between black and white musicians and their music.
143
I have always made commercial music. The people who vote for the Grammy nominees are mostly in their 40s and have other jobs or are musicians themselves. They like music that they can relate to – they like commercial music.
144
Folk musicians have a lot of the same self-importance, but they’re way more cruel and jealous than rock musicians – I know this for a fact because I used to be a folk musician.
145
I didn’t write any music at all, and then, I remember Jon Anderson being very insistent saying that there were two kinds of musicians: the ones who wrote music and the ones who didn’t.
146
Artists, musicians, scientists – if you have any kind of visionary aptitude, it’s often something that you don’t have a choice in. You have to do it.
147
I get really insecure because even though I can speak in musician’s terms, I don’t know as much as real musicians.
148
Latin America seemed to be a land where there were only dictators, revolutionaries, catastrophes. Now we know that Latin America can produce also artists, musicians, painters, thinkers, and novelists.
149
Lou Reed’s music has been in the lives of millions of people all over the world for decades. He had a truly universal presence and was respected by musicians across all genres.
150
I think when girls hear Beyonce, it makes them move and want to lift their arms up and be strong, be powerful. She puts this energy of positivity out there, which is good for people’s souls. I think musicians are kind of like shamans: they’re bringing the vibrations of a more spiritual state.
151
People think it comes easy to us because we are from a family full of musicians, but I feel it’s all about talent.
152
The thing about a band is, it’s not so much how good the musicians are – it’s the blend of personalities and characters. It’s the human chemistry that makes up a good team.
153
I didn’t start my label out of a business perspective. I did it because I wanted to create a platform where new musicians can have the chance to get into a studio, work with each other, and get their music noticed by a large audience.
154
I hadn’t seen that many movies that really go deep enough into the fears of playing music or the language that musicians can use to treat each other or, like, the way that you can see it dehumanize and the way that it can feel like boot camp.
155
When I came to New York after high school in 1959 and started to meet musicians, ‘Hot House’ was like a standard jam session tune.
156
I believe as musicians and artists we have an obligation to our souls. What that is? Only each one of us knows. I can speak for myself and say my obligation is to be happy. When I’m happy, I make great music. When I’m unhappy and my heart is broken, I may make brokenhearted music, but it still sounds good.
157
The story of Rod Stewart, the story of Carlos Santana is so inspiring to young musicians because it shows in this trendy business how long a career can last. It shows how you can soar back, regardless of age.
158
I wanted to make the kind of records that I heard in the discos that I danced in at that time. Funky, electronic sounds, while the musicians in the band were more rock oriented. This I suppose created the sound we know as Frankie Goes To Hollywood.
159
I’ve never understood musicians who don’t enjoy doing promotional interviews. I just can’t believe it. I always think, ‘Your life must have been so brilliant before you were in a band.’
160
Often, equipment can as easily function as a security blanket for musicians unwilling or unable to risk anything personal in the studio. Whether one catches the feeling on a record is a subjective matter. How can you be sure? The machinery can hold out the promise of at least mechanical perfection.
161
In The Doors we have both musicians and poets, and both know of each other’s art, so we can effect a synthesis.
162
A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It’s an individual-feel thing, you know?
163
When you play with great musicians, whether they’re schooled or self-taught, they keep you on your toes. It comes down to people’s personalities and individual energies.
164
I don’t take compliments very easily. I think most musicians suffer from low self-esteem to some extent.
165
But recently I began to feel that maybe I wouldn’t be able to do what I want to do and need to do with American musicians, who are imprisoned behind these bars; music’s got these bars and measures you know.
166
The Internet has definitely opened doors and leveled the playing field for musicians.
167
If drummers are ‘anti-solo,’ that’s up to them. They’re musicians, and they can play whatever they want. But my inspirations early on were people like Buddy Rich, seeing him on ‘The Tonight Show’, or Gene Krupa.
168
Well there is a lot of work here for younger and older musicians now. Our Ministry of Culture has now really embarked on changing things for artists, and it is getting much better. We just have to organize ourselves as artists, and then things will be better.
169
I have never been one for musicians. I know girls are supposed to go crazy for frontmen who close their eyes when they sing and nod their heads when the drums kick in, but I’m like Shania Twain with that stuff: That don’t impress me much. I’ll take wit and brains over the ability to carry a tune any day.
170
I played with so many musicians and some of the musicians would have something I want. I steal a lot of them, and I mash it up, I mash it up into my chords.
171
Yes, but the great thing about all the people – and I don’t think there is any exception – who I’ve worked with is they’ve all been very, very talented musicians.
172
The musicians that didn’t know music could play the best blues. I know that I don’t want no musicians who know all about music playin’ for me.
173
All musicians start out with ideals but hanging on to them in the face of media scrutiny takes real integrity. Tougher still is to live up to the ideals of your dedicated fans.
174
I think that’s one thing about the entertainment industry: Athletes want to be actors, and musicians want to be actors, so it all kind of mixes nice together.
175
The Musicians Hall of Fame is chosen by thousands of your peers. So it’s the real thing.
176
Music is something I couldn’t live without. My dad was into music, he played for pleasure – guitar, piano. I started off doing jazz, singing with a lot of fabulous musicians here in London before I went to the States. And I still take piano lessons every Wednesday.
177
My brother had a house in Paris. To it came many Western classical musicians. These musicians all made the same point: ‘Indian music,’ they said, ‘is beautiful when we hear it with the dancers. On its own, it is repetitious and monotonous.’
178
We’re musicians; we’re not politicians or anything.
179
I’m just fortunate to get to sing songs composed by such great musicians. It’s a bonus that the songs have been received well.
180
Regardless of who originally made it popular, any hit song becomes a challenge to the ingenuity and imagination of other musicians and performers.
181
Hamp would ask me about tempos in the band: ‘Jacquet,’ he’d say, ‘knock off that tempo.’ A lot of jazz musicians didn’t prefer to play for dancers, which was their loss, really. But good jazz has always had that dance feel.
182
I think that musicians should never forget about the intimacy of bringing two people together, and the aesthetic transference where you’re almost vicariously involved in a romance between other people.
183
From chain gangs to folk songs to intelligent soul, America has created musicians dedicated to truth, justice, and a better American Way.
184
I came from a huge extended family of musicians.
185
I basically love classical music. I love a lot of musicians playing together and the whole culture of that, whether it’s Indian or it’s Western.
186
We’re all continuing to grow up and get better as musicians, and the chemistry as a band continues to deepen.
187
Naturally, no one knows more about music than musicians. They talk about their own work all the time, but they rarely get to talk about other people’s music.
188
We need to take music out of the ivory tower – both for musicians and for the public. Otherwise, classical music will not survive the 21st century.
189
I owe everything to the musicians I work with.
190
I don’t think I set out to have a career in female groups, but it’s just kind of happened, and by nature of having worked with my sister – growing up with a sister who also plays, and being in communication with other female musicians.
191
When you keep the caliber of musicians very high in the band, people are going to come and go. Some of them will be people who have to try various things, it’s natural.
192
All rock musicians are deaf… Or insensitive to mellow sounds.
193
You’ve got certain guys that just want to be famous and then you’ve got the real musicians that just love playing music.
194
Various different people have inspired me throughout my career. From Francis Bacon to Vassareli, Coco Chanel to Christian Dior, Cecil Beaton, musicians, architects… the list is endless.
195
A lot of young musicians get the money at the wrong time. They get it for something they don’t feel great about, and it’ll make you feel so bad it’ll destroy you and kill you.
196
And it’s a lot harder to hide with four musicians than it is with eight.
197
The people in Japan know more about the history of jazz and the musicians than the people in the United States do.
198
Musicians playing together, it’s a conversation, and ideally I want our conversation to be really intriguing and interesting and beautiful.
199
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen some very excellent women musicians.
200
What I try to do is produce an atmosphere where musicians want to invest in what they do and give to the recording. I hire those musicians who I know will play something creative and interesting.
201
Coltrane would do what you’d get a Roland Pro Tools module to do but with a group of jazz musicians.
202
Jazz musicians, in a way, are nerds. We are so in our world.
203
The world must be filled with unsuccessful musical careers like mine, and it’s probably a good thing. We don’t need a lot of bad musicians filling the air with unnecessary sounds. Some of the professionals are bad enough.
204
Many of our greatest musicians abandoned all of their aesthetic objectives to try to become pertinent. And, at the end of the day, they never became pop stars. I counter stated that very strongly, and I continue to do that.
205
Musicians now find themselves in the unlikely position of being legitimate. At least the IRS thinks so.
206
I’m not a big fan of lead vocalists, people who sing but don’t play. I never wanted to be in a band where the guy who was up front just sang. I’ve always thought it better when one of the musicians sings, like Steve Winwood.
207
Great music seems to come from a lot of angst, and that angst is from great musicians getting together with intense chemistry. When that chemistry isn’t there, people tend not to write great music.
208
And what classical music does best and must always do more, is to show this kind of transformation of moods, to show a very wide psychological voyage. And I think that’s something that we as classical musicians have underestimated.
209
Because my musical training has been limited, I’ve never been restricted by what technical musicians might call a song.
210
The record company started as an adjunct to that, to give young composers their first recorded performances; to give young musicians their first debut on a recording. These are all things that big record companies would never touch because there is no money in it!
211
There’s something about live players that you cannot get with machines: With live musicians, you can strike a groove, you can feed off each other… And, even though somebody might make a slight mistake, it’s all real!
212
I talk to people who are musicians, and they go, Oh this is hell. And I go, Are you kidding me? You never put tar paper on a roof, did ya?
213
My family was all musicians. We jam all the time.
214
All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians.
215
Certain jazz musicians just copy what was done 100 years ago. The music won’t grow if nobody takes a risk.
216
I think a lot of people who want to be musicians terrify their parents because they don’t have a living example of it in their families, and I did. So I always knew that it was possible.
217
Creating sounds together with other musicians is something I’ve always liked doing.
218
I love working with different musicians in the studio, that’s a real joy working with someone for the first time.
219
When I do the music, I make the musicians listen to what’s happening in the film. That way they treat the dialogue as if it was a singer.
220
I want to talk to the bullied kids of the world. Tell them to hang on, it will get better. Know that an ‘Iron Chef,’ actors, musicians, artists and all successful people have probably been bullied in their life. And the best part of your life is yet to come. Whatever it takes to live, do it!
221
At the time, there was a great disagreement over ‘The Wild and the Innocent,’ and I was asked to record the entire album over again with studio musicians. And I said I wouldn’t do it, and they basically said, ‘Well hey, look, it’s going to go in the trash can.’ That’s the record business, you know.
222
Great musicians are great musicians, whether they’re playing a trombone or an electric guitar or a xylophone.
223
My parents were serious working musicians, but they were not stars – not like pop stars that you have now. They had to make a living and that meant touring, working hard, going on the road – and we were roped in.
224
Being on ‘Nashville’ and working with some incredible people like T-Bone Burnett and Buddy Miller – so many wonderful, incredible musicians that I’ve been blessed to play with and observe – that has continued to shape the process of arranging music, writing music.
225
I’m inspired by artists and musicians. There are so many wonderful and talented people in the world. I love discovering new music, new writers, or new art.
226
Black musicians were imitating speech cadences, and Kerouac was imitating the black musicians’ breath cadences on their horns and brought it back to speech. It always was speech rhythms or cadences as far as the ear that Kerouac was developing. All passed through black music.
227
There are a lot of musicians who are still desperately trying to pretend that it’s 1998 and by having a huge marketing campaign, they somehow believe that they can sell 10 million records. That’s delusional. No one sells 10 million records. The days of musicians getting rich off of selling records are done.
228
I see all the musicians in Blur with equal standing, really.
229
Europeans really provided many venues over there and hailed the jazz artists, and a lot of musicians went over there and stayed over there for a long time. A lot of them moved over there, lived over there, and died over there.
230
In ‘Spinal Tap,’ there’s the fake historical quality of ‘Stonehenge.’ It’s something the musicians look at with a mystical reverence. In folk music, it’s the seriousness with which these people approach their ‘art.’
231
Very few of the men whose names have become great in the early pioneering of jazz and of swing were trained in music at all. They were born musicians: they felt their music and played by ear and memory. That was the way it was with the great Dixieland Five.
232
Somebody might get criticized for doing some movie that totally sucks, then turn around and be incredible. Every actor goes through that, not just musicians who act.
233
I think Paris smells not just sweet but melancholy and curious, sometimes sad but always enticing and seductive. She’s a city for the all senses, for artists and writers and musicians and dreamers, for fantasies, for long walks and wine and lovers and, yes, for mysteries.
234
When I listen to music, there’s usually some aspect of that music that I like, and that’s what I take and try to bring into my own music. Bringing in other musicians to collaborate with is a good way for me to test out new ways or make music that I might have not discovered on my own.
235
I think musicians and artists are the most philanthropic people I know. Their charity record of the music business would hold up to the work of anybody.
236
Many musicians will say they don’t care about the money yet they must commit themselves to appear at given times and places, and to produce what sells, whether they believe in it or not. It depends on contracts.
237
This is what really makes real jazz musicians: people coming out with their own voice.
238
Writers and musicians are very similar in that the chances of making a life in either field are so infinitesimal. And once you’re in, the chances of staying viable are difficult. But there is something incredibly different about performing in front of a live audience, as opposed to sitting at your desk typing.
239
I have two brothers that are musicians. My older brother, Yuval, is a saxophone player. My younger brother, Avishai, is a trumpet player.
240
There were bars that began to have acoustic musicians play, it was 1970: Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, America, The Eagles, all that kind of stuff was popular. It was very easy for me to just kind of move in and be noticed.
241
People are afraid to ask musicians to be involved in projects because they anticipate being turned down. Young artists hesitate before contacting me. People in my position don’t get approached often enough.
242
Some musicians like to decorate their walls with discs saying: ‘1 million records sold in America.’ I prefer to put up discs marking sales in lesser-known countries.
243
There have been many great musicians that, Clifford Brown is one great example, I mean he died very early, 25.
244
My dad’s side of the family had lots of artists and musicians. There’s an emotional, quite sentimental quality to Slavic culture. It’s very open, it loves art, it loves music, it loves literature. It’s very warm, it’s very up, it’s very down. I would celebrate that.
245
Musicians can run this state better than politicians. We won’t get a lot done in the mornings, but we’ll work late and be honest.
246
Yes, I was on the cover of ‘Vogue,’ but girls on the cover of ‘Vogue’ are the most scared of rejection. Models are the most insecure of them all. Actually, actors and actresses are, and then musicians, and then models!
247
I’ve been asked why does Ireland produce so many great musicians, and the answer is it doesn’t. When you count the great musicians Ireland has given the world in the last 20 years, you can do it on one hand.
248
The shows are so different from each other, depending on whether I play with my band, Nine Stories, other musicians, an orchestra, only one or two members of my band.
249
I was living in New York. Sometimes, our gang of musicians would go to Louis Armstrong’s home and play records. It was a lesson, like going to school at night. Ella Fitzgerald was an inspiration, too, a unique artist. When you had an opportunity to be with people like them, you cherished it.
250
I really thought I was gonna have a straight gig. But these jazz musicians put their arms around me time and again and said, ‘Hey, young fella, you’re one of us. Come with us.’ That’s a big deal when you’re young and looking for your way in the world.
251
This is how many people become artists, musicians, writers, computer programmers, record-holding athletes, scientists… by spending time alone practicing what they love.
252
Right out of school, I did this show called ‘Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.’ It is based on a classical text with new music – not necessarily confined by a certain genre. It was a diverse, interesting group of musicians, actors, nonactors, and singers all creating this thing that is bigger than all of us.
253
Some musicians make and record music; other musicians play in a band… I just make and record music, and I don’t feel a part of anything in any music business.
254
Actors always want to be musicians, and musicians want to be actors.
255
A lot of musicians put diamonds on things to show they had money. I on the other had felt that Daytona showed I had style and I didn’t need to be flashy.
256
I think it was that we were really seasoned musicians. We had serious roots that spanned different cultures, obviously the blues.
257
I don’t hate being compared with female musicians. I don’t mind that at all. I have no problem with seeing connections between women’s work.
258
I was being ridiculed for going to school… But, you see, I had looked hard at the other musicians and the whole show-business scene… They were doing with jazz musicians what they usually reserved for rock n’ roll cats: making them overnight successes, then overnight antiques.
259
Well, my musicians are my friends.
260
So many actors and musicians seem to be only interested in what’s expected of them, and they join the dots accordingly. I don’t fit into any narrow categories as an actor or a singer.
261
I don’t know why I keep saying this, and I don’t know why I keep using their names… And I’m not dogging them. I’m not slandering them. I’m not saying they are bad musicians. But how can Taylor Swift or Justin Timberlake win for R&B and funk? They are pop singers.
262
I only choose musicians who I think will emerge, can emerge, with their own character, while still going along with the tune in question.
263
I don’t talk about my personal life. But the relationships I’ve had have usually been with other musicians. It’s just easier that way.
264
My parents are both musicians and made sure we all played music. My brothers and sisters all play instruments, so we’ll get together whenever we can and play. We play a lot of classical music – you know, the good stuff.
265
We were playing, not for the drunks, but for the musicians, because it was more intellectually challenging. We needed somewhere to put our energy to show that we were growing, and as we started to achieve this, people came to hear us musically.
266
There has to be an interaction of musicians on stage. Otherwise I feel too alone up there. When performing is really good, when it really works, maybe once every 15 shows, it’s very special, and you realize that’s why you do it.
267
The thing about Led Zeppelin was that it was always four musicians at the top of their game, but they could play like a band.
268
There is no roles. No one is keeping any roles. The drummer is also answering everybody and everything. So it is a constant conversation and communication between musicians on an extremely high level with extremely valuable material, motifs, and melodies.
269
You listen to Bob Dylan and you can’t help but think of the 60s, it’s very relational and if artists are true artists and not just mere musicians they need to be truthful because the music doesn’t come from them it comes from the universe and it’s to be shared. At best, we’re skilled presenters, and I say that at best.
270
Quite a few musicians came to our house. And my ma took me to hear many more, hoping to encourage in me a love of music. But she wouldn’t consent to my having music lessons, for she feared I might end up as she had done – unable to play except from paper.
271
On Eye of the Zombie, I had so-called studio musicians.
272
Music companies and buyers are not too encouraging towards independent musicians. Everyone wants to play safe and go with established names, but unless one breaks this routine, no new talent will come and survive.
273
I ultimately do still feel like an outsider, and I do feel, actually, I’m more in the world of music because of how much I participate with musicians – in all aspects, not just clothes.
274
A friend of mine took me to Memphis advised me that I should get in the musicians’ union. He gave me a set of drums and said, Stay on the job, son.
275
I grew up around electronic instruments. To me, the turntable is an electronic device. At the same time, I had access to drum machines and keyboards through my uncle; then track recorders into computers. At an early age, I was messing with computers more than most hip-hop musicians.
276
The artist is the consciousness of society… but musicians’ role is very special.
277
Tons of musicians who I love are imprisoned by their identity. That can be totally fine because they are so amazing in their technique, but for me, I’m a little too restless for that.
278
The true beauty of music is that it connects people. It carries a message, and we, the musicians, are the messengers.
279
All musicians and artists – we all got quirks that have to be put up with at certain times.
280
None of my kids want to be actors. They are actually very interested in being musicians. I think they like the process of film from the outside. Mad is interested in editing. Pax loves music and deejaying.
281
Westminster politics is very unattractive, and people are channelling political energy into more inward questioning – there are a lot of musicians whose songs are all about feeling, and it’s almost like that’s the only safe place to express yourself.
282
I wish I played guitar so I could start a band with great musicians.
283
I think my intention was there, and my love for the music was apparent. And there are very few singers who get up and desire to take the kinds of risks that jazz musicians routinely need to be taking.
284
In the mid-1800s, they were known also as ‘singsong houses,’ and the courtesans were actually master musicians.
285
If you look at the way people behave at shows, icons are now musicians; they are the people that we worship.
286
A lot of cats in New Orleans, very soulful, very soulful musicians and they assume that they’re singers. And they just make that assumption. And so when there’s a little intonation problem, people are very forgiving of them because they heard how soulful they play.
287
Actually John, Paul Rutherford, and Trevor Watts, and several other rather well known English jazz musicians had got their training by joining the Air Force, which was a pretty standard way for people to get some kind of musical education in those days.
288
When you’re making music or playing a song, I find the moments when there are no instruments being played even stronger than when they are being played. Because they add tension. It’s also an ego-less thing – a place where you have no ego – when you’re with a bunch of musicians who stop and listen instead.
289
I’ve worked with lots of musicians – like Tina Turner – and I love when they go in front of the fitting mirror and do their thing, pose, dance. I love that moment!
290
Lady Gaga is one of the most amazingly talented musicians to bring her gifts to humanity in a long time.
291
I was drawn to it much to my father’s dismay. He wanted me to be a pianist like he was, but I had coarser tastes – like that old joke: What do you call a guy who hangs around with musicians? A drummer.
292
The bottom line is that musicians love to make music and always will.
293
Um, musicians are funnier you know, than actors on the whole.
294
I was very young, and I kind of decided I wanted to do comedy. My parents were musicians, so we traveled on a tour bus. You’re in a different town every night; as a kid, you’re trying to make friends fast. You try to be funny.
295
Most of our music is about how we perceive the world and how we try to persist as normal, average human beings. So our fans inspire us and give us a direction to go as musicians. And of course, their love and support keeps us going.
296
I’m a really good team player. That’s what it takes to work in the theater. That’s what it takes to work in a band with musicians and writers.
297
I’d been studying philosophy at the University of Chicago. I hadn’t been doing well, because I was sitting in with jazz musicians at night – it’s hard to read Heidegger, but it’s especially hard if you’re half asleep.
298
Why can’t jazz musicians just leave a melody alone?
299
Most musicians count at the beginning, and never count and talk to their musicians after that. They only talk to them at the end of the song. But I would count with them and talk.
300
Backup dancers are completely respectable. They’re the studio musicians of dance.
301
I think, as musicians, our music should be who we are. Sometimes it’s not – it’s someone else’s. All heartfelt music and all honest music, it’s who we are. Of course, our upbringing has everything to do with it.
302
The public is usually slow to catch on to new things, and it’s important that musicians stick to their guns and not look for that instant gratification.
303
There’s no background of creativity in my family; there are no actors or musicians.
304
First, it doesn’t surprise me that traditional music has experienced a kind of exhaustion in the 20th century – not forgetting that many musicians started to look outside the traditional structures of tonality.
305
Even my family laughed at me because they thought this young guy who’s always stuttering in front of other people should be in front of 100 musicians and talk to them and leading them.
306
I understand that, because there are so many musicians, you have to make artists into brands, but I sometimes feel like I have to be some kind of non-human icon in order for people to listen to my music.
307
I’ve been around jazz and jazz musicians most of my life.
308
I always loved the look of musicians. I’ve always admired them because they have a look – when I was growing up, it seemed that the ones I liked didn’t need to have a stylist.
309
It costs a lot of money to make an album in a studio in New York with a producer and musicians. I have to pay a publicist every month. I have to pay for mastering, production, the manufacturing of the discs. Then, to promote an album properly, you have to spend a lot of money.
310
Since I was 18, I’ve been under orders from magazines and newspapers – chiefly The New York Times and Rolling Stone – to step into the lives of musicians, actors, and artists, and somehow find out who they really are underneath the mask they present to the public. But I didn’t always succeed.
311
The musicians are really on board, they’re doing a great job together. There is some kind of a good chemistry, I would say affectionate chemistry and it’s a huge promise of success.
312
For me, let’s keep jazz as folk music. Let’s not make jazz classical music. Let’s keep it as street music, as people’s everyday-life music. Let’s see jazz musicians continue to use the materials, the tools, the spirit of the actual time that they’re living in, as what they build their lives as musicians around.
313
Publishing the lyric books, poetry or comics of other musicians I know. That’s the thing I really want to break into!
314
We’re not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour.
315
Groups are corporations now. They have pension plans. Musicians have saw the daylight.
316
If you give me a bass guitar and you ask me to improvise something, or even be with some musicians and follow them, I wouldn’t be able to do it. And I want to change that.
317
Musician jokes are a kind of joke that usually have to do with how much money someone makes. Musicians are always starving, so they’re really mean to each other about who makes what.
318
I think musicians oftentimes have the right skill set to be good actors. And with Rihanna, I noticed her and knew of her obviously, and was very taken with her charisma and her confidence.
319
The world is full of musicians who can play great, and you wouldn’t cross the road to see them. It’s people who have this indefinable attitude that are the good ones.
320
I was interested in music and making movies about musicians, but my own experiences, and doing what it felt like for me to be a drummer? Nah, I wasn’t interested in that.
321
In ‘Heart of Gold’ at one point, there were 23 players on the stage with him. And part of what’s magic about Neil is the way he interacts with the other musicians.
322
Musicians wake up and create a more loving community by creating heavier music.
323
Ideally, musicians belong outside the Establishment. When they cross that line, it’s like something in them has died.
324
I’m not a great inventor from scratch. What I do is to use, steal, acquire, reproduce or re-cycle music from other musicians.
325
It’s not an accident that musicians become musicians and engineers become engineers: it’s what they’re born to do. If you can tune into your purpose and really align with it, setting goals so that your vision is an expression of that purpose, then life flows much more easily.
326
Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.
327
I believe musicians have a duty, a responsibility to reach out, to share your love or pain with others.
328
Jazz was the beginning of rhythm music, which developed into rock and roll. But what the jazz musicians lost because they were so far from their homeland was the intricate rhythms of African music.
329
I would advise dancers, musicians and others in the entertainment industry to take up yoga, as it clears the mind and creates a sense of balance and stillness which is important for any performing artist.
330
When working with classical musicians, it is important to be clear as possible in the score about what my intentions are. Because there isn’t a lot of rehearsal time, especially at the ballet, it’s best if everything is written in the score.
331
I don’t feel like that many musicians are competitive with each other.
332
It has always seemed slightly uncomfortable, the idea of politicised musicians. Very few of them are clever enough to do it; if they’re good at the political side, the music side suffers, and vice versa.
333
There are entertainers and there are musicians, and I never was an entertainer.
334
Honestly, I envy painters, who can have a masterpiece in one morning. Or musicians, who can write something in 30 minutes and arrange it in an hour, sometimes. ‘Cause with this, with writing, you can occasionally feel like a caveman, like you’ve been working with pitch and tar on this brush.
335
Glenn Hughes is one of the most naturally talented musicians, but he’s still copying Steve Wonder to this day, so I can’t call him a bona fide member of Deep Purple.
336
Like Russell, I enjoy the fact that when I’m playing solo, if I want to do something completely spontaneous, I don’t have to worry about how I’m going to cue the other musicians, or if it’s something that’s rehearsed.
337
For about seven years. I really like it there. There are a lot of great musicians. The scene is very open. A lot of stuff going on. People’s ears are really open, they are not closed. A lot of scenes here, people just get tunnel vision and are into one thing.
338
I’ve done my share of busking, and it’s fun until it isn’t. There are musicians in the subways that will make you cry, they’re so good.
339
Some musicians play blues, others classical jazz or bluegrass. I like to play political roles because I can merge my political interests with my creative interests.
340
My primary influences were the best jazz players from the 50’s and 60’s and later some of the pop people from the same time period along with the better of the well known blues musicians.
341
Musicians are in-season all the time.
342
I started imagining this whole different world. It was a society of musicians, a family I hoped I could belong to one day.
343
Northeastern folk music influenced me from a very young age. Sachin Dev Burman is one of the inspirational musicians in Indian film music. The way he fused folk music with his signature style is amazing. So, I am aware of the beauty of northeast folk music.
344
Writing songs with Brian and performing them with Al Jardine, Dennis Wilson, Carl Wilson, David Marks, Bruce Johnston and many other brilliant musicians over the years is my legacy, and something of which I am very proud and protective.
345
Musicians play music because you love… I loved to play drums since I was five. It’s all I ever wanted to do. Rock stars, or as we call them, posers, guys who want to just look great, dress great. They’re not musicians; they’re looking for the fame.
346
My parents were opera singers and voice teachers, so growing up, I admired musicians and dancers.
347
I’ve met a lot of jazz musicians in my day, and they’re all funny.
348
Any musician – I would say 99% of musicians – needs some help along the way. Most people, even if they’re self-produced, have someone else mix it, or they’ll have someone else master the record. Inevitably, it’s like somebody else’s personality being put into your art.
349
There’s a different feeling when you’ve played with musicians for 30 years. A lot of stuff doesn’t even need to be said, especially onstage. We just read each other so well.
350
The consistency – either the theme from record to record, or the band, the different musicians – it really varies. So if I get criticism, I don’t worry about that, because I’m still being creative.
351
I love art, and it plays a huge role in my life. It’s definitely one of my greatest joys, and I’m a bit fanatical about certain painters and poets and musicians and sculptors.
352
I couldn’t get session work because most musicians hated my style.
353
One of the best things about Kickstarter and crowdfunding and the collapse of the music business is a lot of artists like me have been forced to face our own weird mess about ourselves and what we thought it meant to become musicians.
354
I think we musicians are emissaries. Every time we go before the public, we’re there to make converts.
355
Ah, ‘Pather Panchali’ was the most inspiring film that I wrote music for, and it was so spontaneously done. I saw the film, composed on the spot, along with myself and only four other musicians, and everything was done within 4-1/2 hours, I think an all-time record anywhere.
356
I’ve never been able to sit round on my own and play drums, practice in the back room, never been able to. I’ve always played with other musicians. It’s how I play, there’s no joy for me in playing on my own, bashing away. I need a bass, a piano, guitar, whatever, and then I can play.
357
A lot of people from the Bay, especially musicians, feel like northern California is not the place where everything’s poppin’ off and not quite on the cutting edge artistically as New York or L.A. People from the Bay feel like they have something to prove, and I always love feeling like I have something to prove.
358
I want musicians to be looked at as people that are not just doing one thing.
359
Musicians are so well covered in the press, it would be great to see more outspoken practitioners of green life.
360
U2 are a great band; they’ve given us an unbelievable body of work, and all of us musicians owe them at least something. I can honestly say that every time I have played the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, as soon as my drums are set up, I go into the beat of ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday.’
361
People need to put my music in a perspective where they use other established artists from the past, and almost all the names I see related to my music are great musicians.
362
I think Phil Collins is one of the most underrated musicians, singers, performers – he is absolutely amazing, I think, and I think he’s probably got a bit of a rough ride occasionally because he became so mainstream and so popular.
363
I’ve always wanted to make music like people write plays, so I was inspired by writers as much as musicians.
364
I don’t have to compete in the charts. I can just be myself as a musician, a songwriter and play with the musicians that I really love.
365
I know a lot of people who are struggling musicians; it’s a hard life, and I’ve risked being that. The rewards are tremendous now that I’ve made it, I thank God every day. But I put it all on the line for it.
366
I’m turned on by guys who are cultured. That’ll keep me intrigued. They don’t have to have a single degree, but they should speak other languages or know things about other parts of the world or history or certain artists or musicians. I like to be taught. I like to sit on that side of the table.
367
That’s the thing about musicians: The priority is to create something new that’s never been before. And you put your life on the line every time that you play.
368
There were definitely bands and musicians I liked that drove my mother insane. I probably liked them all the more for it! Bjork drove my mom nuts. What I listened to was actually pretty mom-friendly for the most part. I wasn’t very rebellious.
369
Musicians are hungry for new music.
370
There is some sampling on my records and a lot of what I call replays, where I’d have musicians come in the studio and replay the sample from the original record. But mainly, we’d come up with our own music.
371
The magic of playing has to do with how much everyone wants it to succeed. If you have five players in a situation where the music is being improvised and one is determined it is not going to succeed, it won’t succeed even if one of the musicians takes control.
372
The collective conscience of a hundred musicians is no light burden. Think for a moment of what it would mean to a pianist if by some miracle every key of his instrument should suddenly become a living thing.
373
I would love to bring the children from my foundation Sinfonia por el Peru to play with some of the best musicians in the world.
374
As far as artists and musicians, they don’t retire. They might tour less.
375
Being in The Fall isn’t like being in another group. It isn’t a holiday. A lot of musicians are really hard to deal with. They aren’t as smart as me.
376
I love anyone who breaks the rules, and musicians always break the rules – in an aggressive way.
377
The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.
378
Historically, musicians know what it is like to be outside the norm – walking the high wire without a safety net. Our experience is not so different from those who march to the beat of different drummers.
379
If you look at anyone at the top of their profession, there has to be something a little bit different. Some of the top musicians are quirky aren’t they, to say the least. You have to be driven, cold, hard and mentally tough as iron. My missus thinks I’m a bit weird.
380
Musicians are always gigging and never have a chance to stop for a minute.
381
I couldn’t do what I do without the encouragement and influence of the musicians I played with in Chicago.
382
Generally my focus has been on people who make things, whether it’s writers or directors or painters or musicians.
383
I have had a place in New York in the musicians’ district on the Upper West Side since 1986.
384
It bothers me when musicians listen to music from the ’60s and try and recreate it. Those people weren’t trying to recreate music from the ’20s. Why do it?
385
I think Baltimore is a wonderful artistic community with a lot of great musicians. It’s kind of like a little secret for musicians.
386
The Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame will provide a center where the lives and the artistry of the greatest jazz musicians will be celebrated, and where people will come to learn about jazz, something to which my brother devoted his life’s work.
387
I found that jazz musicians, possibly more than their classical counterparts, wear long-standing friendships easily and gracefully.
388
Musicians burn through more cash than the Federal Reserve.
389
The good thing about working alone is I get a lot done and I can experiment more. The bad thing is I miss out on the gregarious, social way that most musicians work.
390
I don’t have a family that grew up singing and playing all the time. I didn’t really have anything to judge my abilities against until I got out into the professional world and met other professional musicians. All I had was my own way of arriving at a song. That was it.
391
Jazz stands for freedom. It’s supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don’t be a perfectionist – leave that to the classical musicians.
392
No, I’ve heard over the years that it’s nice for them to see somebody who’s like, you know, a well-known successful musician who’s Asian. I’ve heard it from a few musicians, too.
393
We have such a high drop-out rate from musicians, said the head of the college. He was right – I dropped out before I even dropped in. Months later they were still asking what had happened to me, not realising that I was on a UK tour.
394
I feel like, as musicians, we need to fight the Spotify thing. I feel that in some ways what’s happening in the mainstream is the last gasp of the old industry. Once that does finally die, which it will, something else will happen.
395
I’ve got lots of friends who are musicians, so if they ask me to do things, I’ll go and do it for a laugh. I don’t want to be a pop star or anything like that.
396
I have always been a person who is concerned with the dignity of jazz music and the way jazz musicians have been treated and are treated, and the fact that the music has not been given the kind of due that it deserves.
397
The type of music we know as classical music began with rich people hiring musicians or owning them in a way. Without funding, it’s very hard to have this experience. Be it state money or private money, there has to be someone dedicated to raising the money.
398
I know there are a lot of musicians and a lot of artists, and there are a lot of writers and other people who inspire young people, but I’d like to see somebody in political life be able to connect and make these choices that we need to make in Washington real in terms of people’s lives.
399
I did a concert… in September with the Berlin Philharmonic… They’re great musicians, and there’s always something to learn from them.
400
They sign a bunch of women, and they call it a movement. I don’t like the way women in music have been identified as women first and musicians second.
401
This is a cause that musicians can take to heart because one of our main reasons for being is to share our music with other people, and this takes us to people who probably wouldn’t otherwise get to hear music on quite this level.
402
With ‘Light,’ I collaborated with a lot of different producers and musicians I respected, and we all wrote and worked on material which I then took to an old-school producer, David Kahne, and we put it all together. The lyrics came first – they were written before the music.
403
Orchestras are not used to playing the kind of stuff jazz musicians like to play. It requires a lot of rehearsal and recording time, so it’s much easier to do on a synth or sampler. So, we came up with that idea.
404
Maybe a part of me recognized how right the improvising spirit of jazz is. Not the sounds, but the freedom to work with musicians who work that way. It felt very natural to me, but I think there’s a way to do it without it being a jazz record.
405
Just look at the Old Testament. They didn’t go out with the army first. They sent the musicians out.
406
Western record companies haven’t always dealt with African musicians in the best way. Giving them a lot of money and telling them they’re going to be bigger than Phil Collins is the wrong way to do it!
407
To be honest, I would probably rather spend, like, a month in prison than spend a month rehearsing with some musicians, metalheads. I pick prison over that, really. And I say that knowing well what prison is like, so don’t get me wrong here. Prison sucks big time.
408
There were so many groups that I had in college, but I was always the solo singer. But what made it so unusual back in the day was that I was a black girl playing with all these white musicians, and I was also singing rock music on top of it.
409
What I look for in musicians is a sense of infinity.
410
When I heard Monk in person in 1955, he was playing with a quartet in a small club. The place was full of musicians, but there was no public at all.
411
Musicians make up for the copies of their songs that get pirated by performing live. I don’t think there will be as many people showing up to hear me read as to hear Beyonce sing. We need to make sure piracy is dealt with effectively.
412
You know, my sister sings, my brother plays drums in my band. My whole family is a bunch of musicians.
413
All of these people kept on being professional musicians and composers in the strictest sense.
414
I’m kind of a geek when it comes to talking about chord structures or melody, so I always loved in-depth conversations with musicians about things. I also enjoy when a fan can just put something on, and they really know nothing about music other than they like it and it touches them in some way.
415
I think Bach is equally a romantic composer because he laid the seeds harmonically for people like Chopin and the great Romantics, Brahms, so it’s difficult to you know all this like labelling and putting – I think Bach is attractive to musicians because he supersedes the labels.
416
Musicians of any era – whether it be The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Rage Against the Machine, or, of course, Madonna – will inspire fashion. And we, in turn, will inspire them.
417
We all kind of dreamed about being musicians, but the narrative around being a musician is it’ll never happen to you. It’s not something that just happens – one in a million shot – all those things that just make you feel like it’ll never happen.
418
What you learn from working with other performers and musicians is invaluable, really, and can only help you grow. I mean, if you spend your whole life focusing on yourself, you’re not really learning much.
419
I think that my past stands me in good stead in that it does have a certain strength for musicians.
420
Whatever I do, I attempt to do it fully. I try, and don’t always succeed, to be thorough. There are musicians who do not know their worth, and if they knew it at one time, it has eluded them. I know my worth. You try not to dwell in the past.
421
I play music a lot but on my own mostly, so it was nice to be around other people. There was a certain sense a relief in the physical act of just playing and being with other musicians.
422
If North American musicians would only know how uncomfortable life is for European musicians.
423
To pay 60 musicians for rehearsal and performance is quite something, and I decided I wouldn’t be able to handle that kind of situation financially again, unless somebody else was taking care of that end of it.
424
I don’t know the names of any pop musicians. Pop music is standardised; it’s made to please the largest audience possible. I also compose to please a large audience, but when you listen to my music, you understand that I have studied and applied the whole history of composition.
425
There seems to be an inclination among rock musicians to be very carefree with money, but I negotiate the best flight and hotel deals on our tours to maximise the band’s income – I don’t want too see too much taken off the top line.
426
If you’re an artist, you want to draw from real life; you want to draw from experiences, emotion, and it’s something that a lot of musicians juggle with. I’ve always found it so fascinating.
427
The best part of touring is playing the shows. I mean, that is the point of touring, at least for me. I have been blessed in that I’ve always gotten to play with other good musicians.
428
With ‘Aja,’ there was a sort of happy conjunction between our tastes and the backgrounds and styles of studio musicians at the time.
429
When it comes to independent music albums, you cannot put in 50 lakhs or a crore in each and every song to first make a video and then even promote it. It’s not possible for a musician or a singer to promote each song. It’s not possible for musicians to do that independently.
430
A lot of musicians are good cooks, and a lot of cooks are musicians, but I think that may just be a result of the creative impulse finding several means of expression. Probably an equivalent number are visual artists, woodworkers or compulsive liars.
431
From the time I moved to San Francisco in 1967 to play with the Steve Miller Band, there was a lot of support in the music community for one cause or another, but this one was special because it was put on by people who understood where musicians’ hearts are.
432
Out of doing all that experimentation with sound I decided I wanted to do it with live musicians. To take repetition, take music fragments and make it live. Musicians would be able to play it and create this kind of abstract fabric of sound.
433
I’d photographed musicians before but this was different. Syd was very charismatic, and he had the aura of a poete maudit, which made him the perfect subject for me – I realised that rock n’ rollers were the modern equivalent of all the poets I was so enamoured with.
434
If you grow up playing in church, it removes a lot of the boundaries that other musicians might have, growing up with sheet music or whatever.
435
I actually love Twitter and Instagram. I do think it’s so strange to think that 20 years ago, people would never have known personal stuff about musicians and actors, but I like it. As long as I don’t obsessively overshare, it’s OK. And when I do overshare, it’s just, like, me saying, ‘I’ve got $7 in my bank account!’
436
Musicians don’t respect a lot of the stuff that is on TRL and a lot of musicians think that stuff on the radio is not good musically so when musicians say that they like us it obviously feels good.
437
Ultimately, what we do as musicians, I think of us as a type of emotional engineer. We essential take these sound waves, this sound, and we organize it into emotion, and that’s how we connect with our audiences.
438
We’re just a real dirty band. We’re raw, and we’re rough. None of us are top-scale, top-line musicians. But I tell you what, you get your top-line musicians and see if they can entertain like us.
439
I will never forget when we performed at the Tokyo Dome. Growing up, I was told that only A-list famous musicians are invited to perform at that venue.
440
There’s always the joy of the performance and fine-tuning new interpretations. Over the years, we’ve all grown as musicians, so obviously there is a lot of subtlety that wasn’t there in the first place.
441
As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something that’s never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.
442
In other words, musicians know that going back to the Spoonful, what we were doing was not copying.
443
I’ve heard from writers and musicians and fans that they think I’m underrated.
444
Apple Music is trying to create an entire pop culture experience that includes audio and video. If South Park walks into my office, I’m not going to say, ‘You’re not musicians.’ We’re going to do whatever hits pop culture smack on the nose.
445
I have met so many of my idols – like Ray Charles, Brian Setzer – all these cats that are legendary musicians. If they had said to me, ‘Hey man, I’m busy,’ it would have crushed my soul.
446
I feel albino musicians could neutralise all the racial problems.
447
Oh man, I love what the South brings as far as the soul, and I really have noticed from even the early days of listening to OutKast and Goodie Mob that Atlanta and the South has a diverse sound to it. You have bounce music. You have soulful musicians. You have artists with vocals who try to do different things.
448
Liverpool was an industrial town, a poor town. The people fought hard for what they wanted to achieve and there was a hunger there, and that hunger has remained with the musicians.
449
Whatever I think, talk and do is because of the influence of God. My music is a tribute to Him. Whenever I compose any music, I try to reach God. I would advice all the budding musicians to do the same and see the difference. Thanks to Him, I am what i am today.
450
I guess the majority of people who want to ban certain musicians are the ones who are so proud of everything America stands for.
451
I believe in monstrosities, and ‘I Am Abraham’ is a monstrosity of sorts, raveling out moment by moment with its contrapuntal songs, as if a band of musicians were at play, all of them with Lincoln’s beard and disturbing grey eyes.
452
The musicians in Chicago gave me my vocation, but New York calls to a jazz musician, for sure. You want to test your mettle.
453
‘Instagram’ is great if you want to share photos, but you’re not that technical. Or, if you’re not interested in sharing publicly, ‘Instagram’ becomes a place where you can not only consume photos and videos from musicians, or whoever, but send them directly to your friends.
454
I realized that improvisers should probably always have time off. But musicians are always gigging and never have a chance to stop for a minute – unless something drastic occurs.
455
I love music and musicians. And seeing great artists dropped from labels was really frustrating and sad to me.
456
I’ve always had money because of my early success with Cream, so I tell young musicians to aim to write their own material, because owning the composition rights makes a very big difference.
457
I’m quite tame as touring musicians go.
458
The hardest thing with musicians is getting them not to play.
459
Musicians – we’re not doctors. We’re not saving people’s lives. We’re not going out and changing the world. We’re not coming up with cancer cures. We’re not any of that. They’re the real heroes of the world.
460
You should never rely on interviews with musicians as being factual. Most of them are mangled and even have made up stuff in them, that is to say, made up stuff by the writer or editor.
461
A Cat Stevens record isn’t just Cat Stevens’ ideas. It’s Cat Stevens and all the musicians who play with Cat Stevens, right?
462
Millennials give comics the kind of adulation past generations reserved for musicians. We respect Lady Gaga. But we’ll travel hundreds of miles to touch the hem of Jon Stewart’s robe.
463
You always feel like rock critics are frustrated musicians. I envy musicians their ability to live their art and share it with an audience, in the moment.
464
For most artists, you take what you have and who you are, and then you expand on it to make it more entertaining. Everyone knows actors aren’t the same people that they play in movies, but people somehow expect musicians to be a certain way all the time!
465
There are musicians who go through their lives sort of shedding their skins. For me, I’ve always felt backward-compatible to Version 1.0.
466
Comedians talk to other comedians the way jazz musicians can talk to each other.
467
To not be modest about it, you’ll find that with only a couple of exceptions, most of the musicians that I’ve worked with have done their best work by far with me.
468
I have a lot of successful musician pals, and as I get older, I find that I’m lucky to be a writer. I have great anonymity compared to musicians who sell the same number of records as I do books.
469
I’m trying everything I can not to be jaded ’cause I don’t like jaded musicians.
470
You can never rely on musicians. I quit high school at one point to make a go of it with this band and we kept breaking up. So I went back to school.
471
I’m a fairly ordinary person – a lifelong reader, a former software engineer, and former math teacher. I come from a wonderful family of teachers, musicians, librarians, and engineers. I think I surprised them as well as my friends and coworkers when I took up writing as a hobby and let it take over my life!
472
Even though it’s become a really cliched thing to see musicians working for charity, it’s still effective and it still has to be done.
473
They taught us because they wanted to pass the knowledge on and educate young musicians. It was not because they had to teach because they failed as musicians. There is a huge difference in the reasons why someone is teaching and what they can offer and what they cannot offer.
474
A lot of my friends are struggling musicians. Being a struggling actor, it’s just frustrating because you’re not allowed to do what you want to do.
475
I had a lot of Bengali friends in Delhi. The bands there had Bengali musicians: for example, Indian Ocean. We use to have a good amount of adda and sing songs through the night.
476
Other musicians are basically personalities who want to make a name for themselves. All I do is sing old songs in the best way I can. What else is there to know? If you were a blacksmith, what would people need to know about you other than whether you can make a good horseshoe?
477
It’s an endless proving of myself, that I really am a musician, that I have something to offer in the room. That women can be musicians, women can be rock stars, women can be more than an objectified idea of a pop star.
478
Being a musician, people ask you a lot about what musicians inspire you, and there’s plenty of musicians that I love and respect, but I think that I’m the most inspired by cinema.
479
I was never worried that synthesizers would replace musicians. First of all, you have to be a musician in order to make music with a synthesizer.
480
I was always trying to do architectural jam sessions. But it’s not quite as easy as singing or playing a guitar, so I would always see wonderful live musicians and just envy them that I wasn’t in that medium.
481
I felt black. I was as far as I was concerned. And I wanted to be black for lots of reasons. They were better musicians, they were better athletes, they were not uptight about sex, and they knew how to enjoy life better than most people.
482
Kids need role models, whether it’s baseball players, actors or musicians: people to bring a little positive light into their hearts and minds. We need to be a little kinder to those people because it’s not easy being that role model, looked upon as something we are all incapable of being – too perfect.
483
I hate how things must be classified. How this is applied to musicians implies that they somehow contrive their products and have studied the demographics of the audience.
484
There are a few musicians that I know who seem on the outside like very asocial or somewhat unemotional people, people who aren’t capable of emotions, and people think they’re very cold inside.
485
I write bars, for the musicians, because they have to be together.
486
The great jazz radio stations have a duty to continue evolving their format just as audiences ask the musicians to evolve. How do you do that with a form of music that has 100 years of recorded history? How do you also keep it contemporary so you don’t isolate your listeners? These are major questions.
487
The income streams of musicians have all been upstreamed into the pockets of computer corporations. Sound recordings are little more than free crackerjacks inside every computer or cellphone that you buy.
488
MTV in general is involved with so many artists – musicians, actors, people in the fashion industry, and art world.
489
I met Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I’m not really star struck by actors, but musicians, that’s when I get star struck. Chad Smith is my number one drum influence, so that was a real mind-blow. I spoke to him – proper English, thank God!
490
For too long, musicians have been the greatest enemy of music. Their lack of desire to proselytize is a kind of betrayal.
491
I do covers for CDs and LPs of music that I like, reissues of old-time music, and then I’m inspired to make some kind of drawing based on this love of the music. I don’t do album covers or CD covers for groups or musicians I don’t like or have no interest in.
492
Music’s always been at the heart of Apple. It’s deep in our DNA. We’ve sold Macs to musicians since the beginning of Macs.
493
I organise jam sessions every month. We have an open session, so everyone knows about it, and we can get as many as 30 people showing up at the house. Somebody will play a tune, and everyone will pick up on it. My best friends are all musicians.
494
I have a lot of relatives that were dancers and musicians and artists. They basically came out of the womb doing it.
495
When you’re filming, if you can’t capture the relationships and interplay, that magical thing that transpires between musicians during a performance, then you’re not going to have a deeply interesting film. It’s vital.
496
The records that I like, they have life and warmth and soul in them. Like the slap back on Scotty Moore’s guitar on ‘Mystery Train.’ You’re not gonna get that in a computer. You’re gonna want a live room, you’re gonna wanna bounce the tape, you’re gonna want real musicians, in a room, vibin’ off of each other.
497
For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.
498
Musicians are like a preacher, a teacher, an actor. You are the mediator who can transfer the energy of beautiful music to the others.
499
I think the future looks great for music, musicians, bass players, and all we love about music.
500
I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it’s not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That’s how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be a musician.
501
I know so many Irish musicians. They’re all over, because there has been so much emigration from Ireland. Like the Jews.
502
Most people are at a concert because they want to be inspired, entertained, moved; we musicians have the mission to be bringers of joy, of ecstasy.
503
The point is, technology has empowered so many musicians, you know?
504
Great musicians accept everything that they hear and find something good. They take what they like and they throw away what they don’t like.
505
Haute couture is like an orchestra, for which only Balenciaga is the conductor. The rest of us are just musicians, following the directions he gives us.
506
There are a lot of Israeli musicians in New York because you want to grow and go onstage, and eventually you have to get out of Israel to do that because there aren’t enough places to play.
507
‘Entertainment Tonight’ would send me out to do interviews with musicians like Sting and Coldplay, and I was able to watch how they plan their shows. The late Jerry Garcia of Grateful Dead always had a game plan, but he also was flexible if he had to change something at the last minute.
508
In my eyes, I think it’s important that if you’re doing something you’re proud of and that is genuine and authentic, you have a responsibility to bring that to as many people as possible, just for the sheer reason that there are musicians out there who are manufacturing emotions that aren’t genuine.
509
There were musicians that influenced me, but they weren’t all women. Teena Marie was a big influence because she wrote and produced her own music, which let me know that women could write and produce their own music, which was an empowering moment for me.
510
We’re all players and musicians and we sure all get along good. We just clicked right off the bat. We started playing and then we almost immediately started recording.
511
We’re not getting paid. We have these great musicians with us and it gives us a real charge. And the audience gives us a charge, because they keep it interesting all the time.
512
If you’re going to use standards as criteria for signing musicians, you can sign thousands. If you’re going to use some sort of conceptual interpretation that’s based on the tradition of those standards, but is trying to move away from it, you’re down to about 10 people or so.
513
When a lot of musicians change styles, their songwriting suffers because they want to be different.
514
Many of the greatest composers and musicians do their best work in extreme confinement but we are seeing it in other fields – uses of technology to link people together in networks to solve problems and almost certainly we’ll get better ideas than we would from them just doing it on their own.
515
Musicians keep playing when the lights go out, when people are suffering, confused, or angry.
516
A lot of the way I sing is playing off other musicians. It’s what I love to do the most.
517
Today jazz is still very much alive. Everywhere I go there’s a new generation of musicians.
518
What people really should be able to be confident in is that the standards of music- making that classically trained musicians present is elite, it is the best and all of us as artists should be committed to that.
519
I was very lucky that more experienced musicians allowed me to caterwaul until I figured out what it was really about.
520
Even when I was fighting in China I met some guys on the local circuit that we’re fighting, they didn’t enjoy it, they wanted to be musicians and do other things, but they’re just fighting because it pays the bills and they get money for it.
521
Sometimes it’s very hard for other New Orleans musicians to break out. It starts with the musician. They have to be willing to take a risk. Playing in the city, you can get comfortable. You think things are going well, but you’re always in the city.
522
I’m thrilled when I hear the greatest jazz musicians. They continue to search in ways other musicians do not.
523
And I always actually say, ‘The Voice’ isn’t just about trying to find a superstar. We also give a platform to gigging musicians and people who do what they do, and expose them to so many other people to enhance what they do.
524
I have no desire to make money off musicians. I just want to promote them because I want to share music.
525
Well, remember that we were all members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.
526
All the people I hung out with were musicians.
527
I want them to come away with discovering the music inside them. And not thinking about themselves as jazz musicians, but thinking about themselves as good human beings, striving to be a great person and maybe they’ll become a great musician.
528
I like to swim a lot, while Stjepan likes to take long walks with girls. He’s the very romantic type. Yes, musicians are romantic.
529
It was the ‘Gaucho’ album that finished us off. We had pursued an idea beyond the point where it was practical. That album took about two years, and we were working on it all of that time – all these endless tracking sessions involving different musicians. It took forever, and it was a very painful process.
530
You had many jazz musicians who lived in the United States, who had a hard time being accepted over here and had to play in sort of these inferior type dives.
531
Jazz is the last refuge of the untalented. Jazz musicians enjoy themselves more than anyone listening to them does.
532
When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.
533
Session musicians kind of respected me because what I was talking about made sense. That all came from an education. Believe me, education does you more good. Maybe that’s the reason I’ve been around so long.
534
We all know the record biz don’t pay. All musicians have day jobs – no matter how big they are.
535
Working with Benny was important for me and for black musicians in general.
536
When I left Van Halen, I went in the studio and made a CD called Marching to Mars with all studio musicians. I did it immediately. With the disappointment riding on my shoulders of the breakup of the band.
537
We are in the entertainment business. This should be fun. We are musicians; we don’t save lives. We shouldn’t… we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously or be revered that much.
538
Musicians like to converse. There’s always interesting conversation with musicians – with classical musicians, with jazz musicians, musicians in general.
539
There aren’t a lot of cover bands that do Boston material or do it well, and the reason for that is that they are hard to play. So we put a lot of work into it. The musicians that I’ve managed to surround myself with after all of these years are individuals who really excel at what they do.
540
So now, thirty years, forty years later, I mean, I could find a whole orchestra of a thousand to put these things together in New York City alone. In those days, if I could scrape up twenty musicians to do this it was something extraordinary.
541
My wife Elizabeth and I started The Really Terrible Orchestra for people like us who are pretty hopeless musicians who would like to play in an orchestra. It has been a great success. We give performances; we’ve become the most famous bad orchestra in the world.
542
I have one message for young musicians around the world: Stay true to your heart, believe in yourself, and work hard.
543
I like to be in the now, now. Sometimes musicians have to wait for me to be genuine with it. As an actor, I don’t have that luxury. You have to make it legit when they say ‘action.’
544
Whenever I felt happy about having discovered something, the first encounter, not only with the public, with other musicians, with specialists, etc, was that they rejected it.
545
The best musicians or sound-artists are people who never considered themselves to be artists or musicians.
546
I know a lot of people that have had fake Twitters… actors and musicians that I know. It’s sort of a problem. There are all these people that sign up thinking that they’re getting somebody’s real thoughts when it’s just some guy.
547
Since music has never had a Rembrandt, we have remained nothing more than musicians.
548
It was by listening to Goodman’s band, that I began to notice the guitarist Charlie Christian, who was one of the first musicians to play solos in a big band set-up.
549
I’d like to think I’ve left something in the world. Without in any way trying to be morbid, but life is very short, and I’d like to think I’d leave some body of work that would inspire other musicians long after I’ve gone.
550
If you listen to a lot of the songs that are popular now, there’s very little melody in there. People love the beat. But to musicians, it’s melody, because we understand how elusive it is and how hard it is to hold.
551
There’s a persona that musicians carry with them. I like to find what’s under the persona.
552
In a jazz atmosphere, the audience members were so quiet and respectful of the musicians that you felt you were almost part of a meeting at a church or a temple, where everyone was completely in tune with the sermon and what the whole event was about.
553
I was a ‘Big Brother’ fan. I thought they were better musicians than their detractors claimed, but more to the point, technical accomplishment was not something I cared about.
554
I have more fun hanging out with my friends who are musicians and rock stars. You know politicians by and large are pretty stiff, pretty rehearsed.
555
James Ralston, my guitar player, has performed with Tina Turner for about 22 years. Jim Hanson on bass has played with Johnny Cash, Rodney Crowell and Bruce Springsteen, and they’re fantastic musicians and amazing singers they get a really cool vocal sound together.
556
Like family, we are tied to each other. This is what all good musicians understand.
557
Being a musician – and I like to think of myself as a musician with a capital M – you need to be an omnivore, and I think the best musicians will listen to anything and love everything, and I do.
558
When I was a kid, I played the piano for six years, and all my family are musicians.
559
I love a lot of the ’70s musicians, like Bonnie Raitt. And I love Sheryl Crow. But probably my favorite musician is a woman by the name of Schuyler Fisk.
560
I was pretty strict in high school about who I would listen to. Musicians like Neil Young, Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell… who were, in my opinion, great writers. The music mattered, but it held hands with the lyrics, and the personality was, overall, unsullied.
561
I went through all the musicians in my life who I admire as bright, intelligent, virtuosic players.
562
One way and another I was having a ball – playing gigs, jamming and listening to fine musicians. Then came a crisis at home. My stepfather fell sick, and it meant I had to support the family.
563
Some musicians feel they have to provide what their audiences expect. They lose the distinction between an artist and an entertainer. I am not an entertainer.
564
Growing up in Chicago, I was a theater nerd. That might be very cool on the East Coast, but in Chicago, it’s really the athletes that come in No. 1 on the cool scale. Maybe musicians after that. Community theater? That’s way down the list, my friend.
565
Certainly one of the more common experiences in the jazz field is discovering someone new. Improvising musicians are capable of being musical travelers, voyagers. We want to join in on whatever we hear. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape.
566
Marvin Gaye is an inspiration to me. He was one of the first Motown musicians that my mom and dad introduced me to, and I always thought it would be a good idea if I was ever an artist, and now I am, to make a record called ‘Marvin Gaye.’
567
I make documentaries from time to time to remind myself of reality. It’s like musicians doing scales to keep their fingers working: when you’re in the street, listening to people, you’re forced to be in the service of your subject.
568
I don’t think people go to musicians for their political points of view. I think your political point of view is circumstances and then how you were nurtured and brought up.
569
I’m not going to ask musicians to sit there and pretend to play. It feels insulting to the musicians to me.
570
Everything I do is collaborative. It’s just my way. I’m really very interested in how the other musicians perceive the song.
571
Some artists and indie musicians see Spotify fairly positively – as a way of getting noticed, of getting your music out there where folks can hear it risk-free.
572
Portland is a place where you can find a community as a feminist, a vegan or a fat activist. Artists, musicians, knitters, and filmmakers can all meet like-minded souls. It’s proved the perfect place for me and all my punk friends.
573
As I grew up, I wasn’t a great buyer of albums, but I really liked ‘The Jam.’ I like good musicians and loved the energy of their songs.
574
The great musicians are those who can reach people, who can make people feel something.
575
There was no support system in Seattle for musicians.
576
There is nothing is more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development in all that book which, alas, musicians read but too little – the book of Nature.
577
If I’m in the studio, I’m completely on music. I try to go to that place and that’s the toughest thing for me to do. When I’m with other musicians, sometimes I go back to, almost like, childhood, because that’s what I always wanted to be.
578
Jazz musicians have always taken the standards of their time and performed them with a jazz sensibility.
579
It was about working with other musicians, but more than that it’s about exploring musical areas that you could never do with the band you’re in, in my case Judas Priest. You could tackle musical areas and lyrical areas that wouldn’t be appropriate for Priest.
580
Under Thatcher, who ruled us with an iron rod, great art was made. Amazing designers and musicians. Acid house was born. Very colourful and progressive.
581
I don’t have actors as friends. There’s no actor who’s my 3 A.M. friend. There are a couple of musicians whom I can call friends, and I have a close knit group of friends whom I feel comfortable with.
582
Musicians want to be the loud voice for so many quiet hearts.
583
As a recording engineer – someone who is deeply embroiled in the process of making records every day – you see trends and fads run through the social organization of the population of musicians in the same way that they would run through a high school.
584
Musicians get tense at big gigs. Some you can’t talk to before the concert; some you can’t talk to afterwards; some need the same size dressing rooms as others; others need bigger; some have comments to make on others’ musicianship or how a particular song ought to be played.
585
I don’t think successful musicians were really put on this planet in order to have a great time, pat themselves on the back and say, ‘Oh, what a clever boy I am!’ I think that, like most artists, we were put on the planet to suffer just a little. And we do.
586
I mean, I could just go round and use session musicians for every song, but I don’t find that helps when it comes to setting up a band for live. Derrick has been with me for donkey’s years.
587
I guess I’ve never been introduced properly to Pink Floyd. I know they’re great, don’t get me wrong. Excellent, excellent musicians; great band; awesome harmony; great song writers; I just don’t know anything besides, I guess, the popular songs on the radio.
588
Where prominent writers are expected to have a socially, politically responsible voice, musicians sometimes find meaning only in the voice which produces melodies with vocal chords.
589
Conductors make too much fuss about conductors! Humility and hard work are virtues. We’re nothing without our musicians.
590
I think musicians should stay off television generally.
591
I always seem to have a vague feeling that he is a Satan among musicians, a fallen angel in the darkness who is perpetually seeking to fight his way back to happiness.
592
Artists and musicians of the Sixties were definitely into clothes.
593
I don’t like to travel as much as I have in the past, but it’s good for my soul to get to pick, especially with these good musicians and these guys that play so well.
594
I’ve followed the lives of great musicians and have learned that you don’t have to always write in pain. You have all of your past experiences, feelings, and thoughts that you can turn on when you need them and turn off when you don’t.
595
Musicians own music because music owns them.
596
I have volunteered for Musicians on Call for the past 12 years because of the incredible one-on-one experiences in hospital rooms when no one other than the patient and I would remember the love that was exchanged.
597
I guess fortunate that I’m still around and I emphasize I guess because you never can tell what musicians would be playing had they been around as long as I have.
598
There’s Eddie’s conviction and his lyrics and his ideals, and he can just rock straight out. His vocals are incredible. And we all are really competent musicians.
599
Critics or musicians who attack me are jealous of my success and the fact that I make people feel so happy.
