Arts, Media & Entertainment: Music Quotes

Similar topics:Anime Art Games Movie Poetry Writing

"Talking about the all night concerts, I did some of the first all night concerts back in the 60s with this little harmonium, and I also had saxophone taped delays"

Terry Riley, Composer

"An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I've left the opera house"

Maria Callas, Musician

"So, essentially my contribution was to introduce repetition into Western music as the main ingredient without any melody over it, without anything, just repeated patterns, musical patterns"

Terry Riley, Composer

"On stage, I am in the dark"

Maria Callas, Musician

"Well, I guess my music came to prominence around one piece called 'In C,' which I wrote in 1964. At that time it was called 'The Global Villages for Symphonic Pieces', because it was a piece built out of 53 simple patterns and the structure was new to music at that time"

Terry Riley, Composer

"I'll play what you want or I won't play at all"

George Harrison, Musician

"We were the Spice Boys"

George Harrison, Musician

"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"

Erykah Badu, Musician

"I like narrative storytelling as being part of a tradition, a folk tradition"

Bruce Springsteen, Musician

"There are only four people who knew what the Beatles were about anyway"

Paul McCartney, Musician

"I used to think that all my Wings stuff was second-rate stuff, but I began to meet younger kids, not kids from my Beatle generation, who would say, 'we really love this song'"

Paul McCartney, Musician

"The repercussions of what you put out and what people gravitate to in your music never registered at all. I never had that thing that maybe other bands have - a specific idea of what they are and what their sound is"

Beck, Musician

"Let us not forget that the greatest composers were also the greatest thieves. They stole from everyone and everywhere"

Pablo Casals, Musician

"Tonight the city is full of morgues, and all the toilets are overflowing. There's shopping malls coming out of the walls, as we walk out among the manure. That's why I pay no mind"

Beck, Musician

"There are a lot of people who really abused sampling and gave it a bad name, by just taking people's entire hit songs and rapping over them. It gave publishers license to get a little greedy"

Beck, Musician

"The advice I am giving always to all my students is above all to study the music profoundly... Music is like the ocean, and the instruments are little or bigger islands, very beautiful for the flowers and trees"

Andres Segovia, Musician

"My first guitar, a Fender Jazz Master, I traded it in for a Les Paul Deluxe"

Lenny Kravitz, Musician

"Perfect Night has that magic and it has the raw energy that grabs you by the throat"

Lou Reed, Musician

"I love Ornette Coleman. I love Don Cherry. I love the way those guys play"

Lou Reed, Musician

"I sing like a lark"

Layne Staley, Musician

"My God is rock'n'roll"

Lou Reed, Musician

"There are a lot of stuff on the record that I am thinking is generic, but actually it is just as good as everybody else who is putting stuff out at the time"

Bruce Dickinson, Musician

"A few of these interviews have gone slightly awry, because every now and again there has been the odd conflict of interest between interviews because of the Iron Maiden record, and I am a bit long-winded"

Bruce Dickinson, Musician

"Music can be used against us as much as it can be used for us. Muzak can put a whole nation to sleep, whereas a lullaby is intended to put a child to sleep in a sweet way"

Holly Near, Musician

"I'm not going to do any more solo touring"

Bruce Dickinson, Musician

"When I write with Maiden, then I write only with the guys in Maiden, we don't do songs from outside people"

Bruce Dickinson, Musician

"The more guitars we have onstage, the better, as I'm concerned"

Bruce Dickinson, Musician

"I do like Marylin Manson, actually. I think, he's very talented and he did make some great music"

Bruce Dickinson, Musician

"Best two rock voices I've heard in a last few years both have been from grunge bands: It's Eddie Vedder and the other one is Chris Cornell from Soundgarden"

Bruce Dickinson, Musician

"Music is like girlfriends to me; I'm continually astonished by the choices other people make"

David Lee Roth, Musician

"When I began, the guitar was enclosed in a vicious circle. There were no composers writing for the guitar, because there were no virtuoso guitarists"

Andres Segovia, Musician

"It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself"

Johannes Sebastian Bach, Composer

"I wish I could score everything for horns"

Richard Wagner, Composer

"To make a rock'n'roll record, technology is the least important thing"

Keith Richards, Musician

"I went through a big Alice Cooper phase, which was probably a major influence on my writing style later, especially after Plastic Surgery Disasters"

Jello Biafra, Musician

"I've discovered this new electronic technique that creates new speech out of stuff that's already there"

Brian Eno, Musician

"I felt extremely uncomfortable as the focal point, in the spotlight. I really like the behind the scenes role, because all my freedom is there"

Brian Eno, Musician

"Every collaboration helps you grow. With Bowie, it's different every time. I know how to create settings, unusual aural environments. That inspires him. He's very quick"

Brian Eno, Musician

"Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others"

Brian Eno, Musician

"As soon as I hear a sound, it always suggests a mood to me"

Brian Eno, Musician

Page 12 of 260