Creativity Quote by Jerry Harrison

A polite sentence with a radical implication: the star system is mostly a fiction, and records are closer to ecosystems than monuments. Jerry Harrison’s phrasing matters. “That said” signals he’s stepping away from whatever hierarchy or auteur narrative came right before - the kind that crowns a frontperson, a producer, a signature sound. Then he swings the door wide: “everything’s important.” Not “a lot,” not “most.” Everything. It’s an egalitarian claim, but also a craft one. In a finished recording, the difference between “good” and “alive” is often in the supposedly minor decisions: a hi-hat pattern that keeps the song airborne, a bass note that lands a chorus, a guitar texture that makes silence feel intentional.

The second clause tightens the argument into ethics. “Every musician who plays…is an integral part of it” pushes against the way credits get skimmed, session players get flattened into anonymity, and the public gets trained to hear only the most visible voice. It’s also a quiet defense of collaborative bands and studio communities, where authorship is messy by design. Harrison isn’t romanticizing togetherness; he’s describing the actual mechanics of how records work. You can’t subtract “support” without changing the story.

Coming from someone associated with a group whose mythology often spotlights singular genius, the line reads like an insistence on due process: listen closely, and you’ll hear a crowd holding the song up.