"I don't know what they're thinking about. Just because someone says, 'I like what you do' or something: They might like it today and tomorrow they might not. I've had that experience with record companies"
About this Quote
Trust is a luxury Ornette Coleman never pretended to own. In this quote, he’s puncturing the feel-good myth that approval equals security, especially in the music business where compliments function like weather reports: pleasant, nonbinding, gone tomorrow. The plainspoken cadence is doing the work. “I don’t know what they’re thinking about” isn’t confusion so much as a refusal to play mind reader for gatekeepers. It’s a quiet power move: if the industry won’t be legible or loyal, he won’t grant it the authority of interpretation.
The subtext is Coleman’s lived knowledge of how institutions metabolize innovation. In jazz, “I like what you do” can mean “I like it as a novelty” or “I like it as long as it stays profitable and controllable.” Coleman’s career is basically a case study in that conditional embrace. He was hailed as revolutionary, then treated as a problem to be managed: too free, too strange, too hard to market until the culture catches up and decides it was genius all along. Record companies, in his telling, don’t operate on aesthetic conviction; they operate on mood, trend, quarterly panic.
What makes the line sting is its modesty. He doesn’t rant about exploitation or demand respect. He just observes the volatility and keeps moving. That’s the intent: a survival ethic for artists whose work can’t be easily packaged. Don’t confuse praise with commitment. Don’t mistake attention for understanding. Keep making the thing, because the people “liking” it are often renting their enthusiasm by the day.
The subtext is Coleman’s lived knowledge of how institutions metabolize innovation. In jazz, “I like what you do” can mean “I like it as a novelty” or “I like it as long as it stays profitable and controllable.” Coleman’s career is basically a case study in that conditional embrace. He was hailed as revolutionary, then treated as a problem to be managed: too free, too strange, too hard to market until the culture catches up and decides it was genius all along. Record companies, in his telling, don’t operate on aesthetic conviction; they operate on mood, trend, quarterly panic.
What makes the line sting is its modesty. He doesn’t rant about exploitation or demand respect. He just observes the volatility and keeps moving. That’s the intent: a survival ethic for artists whose work can’t be easily packaged. Don’t confuse praise with commitment. Don’t mistake attention for understanding. Keep making the thing, because the people “liking” it are often renting their enthusiasm by the day.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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