Musicians |
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Competitions are for horses, not artists. All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing a song. To me the success of any truly great rock song is related to the fact
that people who couldn't communicate in normal ways can quite easily
communicate through the mutual enjoyment of rock music. I think the greatest performances always elude the camera, the tape
recorder, the pen. They happen in the middle of the night when the musician
plays for one special friend under the moonlight. They happen in the dress
rehearsal just before the play opens. Money doesn't talk, it screams. Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there
is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong. I don't want audiences to feel a specific thingI just want audiences to
feel. I totally and completely admit, with no qualms at all, my
egomania, my selfishness, coupled with a really magnificent voice. Use your mentality Music is playing inside my head But the Lord does his work in mysterious ways Improvisation, it is a mystery. You can write a book about it, but by the
end no one still knows what it is. When I improvise and I'm in good form,
I'm like somebody half sleeping. I even forget that there are people in
front of me. Great improvisers are like priests, they are thinking only of
their God. I can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in
succession. If you can, then it ain't music. It's close order drill, or
exercise or yodeling or something, not music. |
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It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I
have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just
crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page. Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If
you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. A lot of people don't have much food on their
table Well, I never went to college and learned I couldn't. An accident is perhaps the only thing that really
inspires us.
A composer improvises aimlessly the way an animal grubs about.
Both of them go grubbing about because they yield to a compulsion to
seek things out. The important thing is to feel your music, really feel it
and believe it. I was never much for rules, anyway; otherwise I probably wouldn't have
invented anything or gone so far in music. I want to take people to another place in the shows. That's
when music really works for me... When I'm really connecting, I almost feel
a continual state of arousal. Well, I fin'ly started thinkin'
straight There's only one woman I know who could never be a symphony conductor,
and that's the Venus de Milo.
This land is your land There's a bran' new gimmick every day |
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Anything anarchistic like Napster is goodit makes
artists ask why they are not in control of what they are doing. Make your money while you can, before you have to stop I have the same goal I've had ever since I was a
girl. I want to rule the world. What we play is life. I can't talk about my singing. I'm inside it. How can you describe
something you're inside of? You can have an idea in your head, but if you can't execute it, what's
the use? She knows there's no
success like failure Musical comedies
aren't written, they are re-written. The most important thing to me as a songwriter is the breath. The most
important thing I could ever say to somebody is, 'Sometimes I breathe you
in.' I don't know anything about
music. In my line you don't have to. |
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The gift of imagination is by no means an exclusive
property of the artist;
it is a gift we all share; to some degree or other all of us,
all of you, are endowed with the powers of fantasy. Elvis was sent by God
to revive sex. So you can have your beauty Help! I need somebody. Not just anybody. Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I
am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them
spiritually drunken. I used to think anyone doing
anything weird was weird. Now I know
that it is the people that call others weird that are weird. I've gone to the guitar because I've had an idea, a line, or a riff. But
I don't do that when I start playing. I do something completely different
that I had no idea I was going to do. Something inside that is an
uncontrolled wish to express itself. It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play. It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing
much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my
sleeve and come out on the page. There's only two ways to sum up music: either it's good or bad. If it's
good, you don't mess about it. You enjoy it. A great song is more than just words and music. It's like a thumb
pressing against the pulse of living that relates a simple truth about a
very complicated process. I can't read or write music, so sometimes, in trying to find things, I
just stick my hand on the neck... some of my favorite things to play started
as mistakes. |
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I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues. "No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly
spoke, The notes I handle no better than many pianists, but the pauses between
the notesah, that is where the art
resides! Do-be-do-be-do When you write a song that's a chore to play, the
performances never sound anything but strained. First, master your instrument. Then forget all that shit and play! The basic difference between classical music and jazz is
that in the former the music is always greater than its performancewhereas
the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being
played. R-E-S-P-E-C-T A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.D.,
or Ph.D. Unfortunately, they don't have a J.O.B. I saw losing my virginity as a
career move. All the best songwriting I do is when my mind isn't working
at all. I like to watch baseball games with a guitaryou don't use your
mind at all. I would rather sing one day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep. The answer is blowin' in the
wind. |
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What I shit is better than anything you've ever
thought! A man is a success if he gets up in the
morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do. Those first five or six songs I wrote. I was just taking
notes at a fantastic rock concert in my that was going on inside in my head.
And once I had written the songs, I had to sing them. Just give to me my gravestone Songs need to have a secret, cryptic, thematic thing about them.
Otherwise they are just messy and all over the place. To this day, no one has come up with a set of
rules for originality.
There aren't any. Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's
chosen form. Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn't do nothing. I've always had a certain song in my head, a certain chemistry of sounds. I'll play it first and tell you what it is later. A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air
molecules. Often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.
I have learned throughout my life as a composer
chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions,
not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and
knowledge.
But if all of us folks that thinks alike |
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I think pure rock and roll, good rock and roll, has the
same thing that anything that's pure hasand that's honesty. Unthinking,
primal, honesty. I've dedicated my life to music so far. And every time
I've let it slip and gotten somewhere else, it's showed. Climb every mountain I try to forget about the audience when I'm singing. I
just think about the words and music. My subject enlarges itself, becomes methodized and defined,
and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my
mind,
so that I can survey it, like a fine picture or a beautiful statue, at a glance.
Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively,
but I hear them, as it were, all at once. Basically, the whole world is doomed. So the way that I
try to make it better... is by playing music that could be spiritually
uplifting, that could put people in a positive state of mind, where they
would have the energy to get up and do something, anything, that's
positive. Businessmen, they drink my
wine, plowmen dig my earth, Too many pieces of music finish too long after the
end. Music is just a means of creating a magical state. To search for truth, one has to be drunk
with imagination. Baby, I'll be your baby The most potent muse of all is our own inner child. |
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It's like a shoe. You take a number seven shoe, you sure
can't wear a size four. You wear the one that fits. The blues fits me. Sometimes on stage I'm like a mirror. Every song feels different. Under Szell they had to be the
best. With me, they want to be the best. If you got a lot o' money you can make yourself merry Music is religion for me. There'll be music in the
hereafter, too. I wish it would last forever, but as long as I am able to
sit with a guitar on me lap, not even to sing to people but just to sing
to myself, I'll be all right. My music will go on forever. Maybe it's a fool say that,
but when me know me facts me can say facts. My music go on forever. To live outside the law you must be honest. |
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