"I started playing piano with a little band in high school. I was terrible. I thought I had absolutely no talent. I couldn't keep time. I only got into McGill, which was a lousy music school, because they were taking American music students"
"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"
"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"
"Solace is my favorite song. It was the last song we wrote for the record. It was right when we really started to mesh as far as music goes and we started really connecting with each other"
"Not that there weren't great shows, and not that there wasn't plenty of fine music played. It's just that the consistency and the height of where we could take it, with the help of the audience, was less, I felt, in the '90s"
"I suppose because I have a good ear, I could pick out harmonies and learn by ear. I still think that you have to have an ear for music to really be able to feel and understand what you're playing. You can learn by watching and listening to other people"
"It is a rare American who does not have some story about how music has made our lives richer and more interesting, how it has changed our moods, brought out the best in our character and even sometimes helped us earn a living"
"Well, I actually first got into music as a small child, and as I became a teen, I sought out making money from music, weather that was singing lounge gigs, backup in studios, or weddings"
"What does music mean to me? I don't think I would really be much without it, without it coming through me. It's my means of communication, my means of growth, my means of transportation from one point in my life to another"
"I see it as more of a teenage activity than, you know, she's only 11, but you know, I think it's great that she knows so many girls who want to play music. And I see it more as a teen activity than I do as going into music"
"I really want to do a book on the history of the no-wave music scene in New York, how it extended out and formed lots of other things. It was such a great visual culture"
"He helped make Living Things even more crazy than I wanted it to be. He added old-fashioned piano and classical folk music - that weird otherworldly vibe - all these elements got onto the record"
"Right now I just finished writing the music for a Rugrats feature film and the third week of September I go to London, and the Orchestra is going to perform the score"
"I think its so cool that you can pick up the guitar and create something that didn't exist 5 minutes ago. You can write something that no ones ever heard before. You have music at your fingertips"
"I remember Tim telling me that he had an idea for a musical and he said to me that he was hoping that ABBA would be writing the music, which I thought was a pretty wild idea because they were obviously known very much as pop writers"
"I had spent many years pursuing excellence, because that is what classical music is all about... Now it was dedicated to freedom, and that was far more important"
"For myself, I can only say that I am astonished and somewhat terrified at the results of this evening's experiments. Astonished at the wonderful power you have developed, and terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever"
"I record all of my music with authentic instruments in a studio before we start editing, doing many, many versions. The music shapes the film as we edit so it has an organic relationship to the content"
"We live in a connected world now. Some find that frightening. If people are downloading our music, they're listening to it. The internet is like radio for us"
"The difference between me and the newer artists is that I have the history with the architects, the masters that started the music. I know where the music came from"
"I think every age has a medium that talks to it more eloquently than the others. In the 19th century it was symphonic music and the novel. For various technical and artistic reasons, film became that eloquent medium for the 20th century"
"What I took back, because of my exposure to the Jewish music of the 30s and the 40s in my upbringing with my father, was that kind of theatrical songwriting. It was always a part of my character. This desire to make people laugh"
"Working on a play is a vibrant and collaborative business. Everyone from the choreographer to the music director to the director to the writers work together toward the same goal, and everyone chimes in on everything"
