Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You externalise extreme emotions, and you look at them objectively and understand them from a different standpoint.
The 'Daryl's House' thing has made me into a live musician even more than I ever was, and even in the way I record.
You must always be very cautious and be as vigilant as you can. You work diligently to provide a secure environment,.
Smokey Robinson is one of my heroes as a singer and songwriter; a major influence on my own music from the very start.
Smokey Robinson is one of my heroes as a singer and songwriter, a major influence on my own music from the very start.
I knew that I would be making music for my whole life; as far as how many people respond to it, you can't plan for that.
The biggest honor of my career was when I won R&B Artist of the Year back in the 1970s. I look at that as a major honor.
To me, there's two kinds of music these days. There's ephemeral music, and there's music that has lasting power and depth.
The whole American pop culture started in Philadelphia with 'American Bandstand' and the music that came out of that city.
If Paul McCartney tells me that so-and-so song is his favorite song, what do I care? What do I care what anybody else says?
I love antique architecture, so if I have any indulgences, I have owned and renovated and reconstructed a lot of old houses.
If you're African American, you are forced into making different choices, in a lot of cases, than you are as a white person.
Every artistic form has its golden age, and unfortunately I think the golden age for whatever I do probably ended about 1990.
If you can sing, you never lose your voice. If you don't know how to sing, your voice goes away because you sing from your throat.
I specialize in early homes, and what I care about the most is renovating a home and taking it back to its original construction idea.
If you take a bunch of superstars and put them in a room where they don't have their assistants and entourage, it's funny to see what happens.
In the early '70s, I started to feel like Philadelphia soul was the black-sheep brother of rock and roll. I decided to try to get away from it.
In my Philly neighborhood, black and white kids hung together without even thinking about it. The spirit of Martin Luther King was alive and well.
I'm used to the egos in the 1960s, '70s and '80s where people just expected massive success and thought it was their birth right to be successful.
As a singer, I float around. I'm kind of scatty, bouncing around a lot. I try to adapt to what's going on around me in the song and the arrangement.
Late 20th century music was a really important thing. It changed the world, and I'm part of that, and now I'm part of the museum that celebrates that.
I was very inspired by my mother. She was a vocal teacher and sang in a band, and my first memories of her were going out with her on the local circuit.
I've been watching RFD-TV for a few years. As a person who lives mostly in the country, I appreciate a network that shows the many facets of rural life.
I definitely dislike pomposity and artifice. I hope that I'm not that. Once I write a song, it belongs to the world, and the way people perceive it, it's cool.
Everybody who I ever cared about has told me that they like my music: Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Al Green, The Spinners, Smokey Robinson. Everybody that matters.
If you see me walking down the street, you're gonna see the same guy as you do on stage, dressed the same, looking the same, and nothing changes. I'm just one person.
Some artists are nervous - most of them are, to tell you the truth, and they have different ways of exhibiting that. Some of them are boisterous, some are really quiet.
I'm just about the best singer I know, and it's time for everybody to say that. I have total facility with my voice. And for some weird reason, critics don't talk about it.
I've watched the world crash and burn in every sense. I've watched the record industry crash and burn; politically I've watched it crash and burn, financially crash and burn.
I hear a lot of people singing in funny voices and singing like they're stupid. Singing in a deliberately fey and dumb and childish way. And I find it to be a disturbing trend.
I returned to upstate NY where I just laid in bed for days with a fever that just wouldn't go away. After more of this, I grew increasingly sure that this was not simply the flu!
When you have that first flash of what you think is going to be a great idea-from the mouth, from the hands-that's an amazing feeling. I don't think anything's quite as good as that.
I think an artist's true worth comes through an inter-generational thing - when you go beyond your own time, and start influencing people in a greater way than just what surrounds you.
I was always an introvert as a kid. Then, when I first kind of came out as a human being, I used to be one of those guys who'd go nuts on the dance floor, and people would gather around.
I was a pioneer in MTV and I was there from the very beginning. So I saw how that developed and how loose it was and how much fun it was in its looseness. And I was influenced a lot by that.
The late 20th century had just enough communication abilities to allow superstar-ness and communality to happen. It was a musical renaissance that rivals the visual one that happened in the 1400s.
I grew up in a very racially integrated place called Pottstown. It was an agricultural / industrial town which has since become a suburb of Philadelphia. I grew up basically in a black neighborhood.
The difference between me and other people in my generation is instead of saying the Internet's killing the record business, I say, 'Who cares about the record business, the Internet is enhancing music.
I was just like a 21st century person waiting to be born, and this is the medium that I thrive in. And I feel stronger now than I did any time since I've been a teenager - I mean, musically, creatively.
The difference between me and other people in my generation is instead of saying the Internet's killing the record business, I say, 'Who cares about the record business, the Internet is enhancing music.'
For years and years, I was beset with snide remarks by certain members of the press, where they would turn John Oates into a joke, or they would trivialize what I do, which never really bothered me all that much.
To write a good song, an artist has to drawn from reality. There has to be some spark from realism that communicates a real feeling to someone else. You have to be real. Or you have to be a really good storyteller.
I wanted to show the world, and myself too, what I can do. I came up in the world of Philadelphia soul, but I'm fluent in a lot of languages musically and I like working with different people from different generations.
This illness made it impossible for me to give my best effort to our audience, but now that it's been identified, I'm looking forward to a complete, quick recovery and to get back out there with John as soon as possible.
My house is actually two houses that were deconstructed. They were Connecticut Valley houses built in 1771 and 1781. I took them down piece by piece and reconstructed them about 50 miles to the west on the New York/Connecticut border.
I'm in the trenches; I do the best work I can always do. Having said that, the way that what I do converges with the outside world is fascinating to me. Because it ebbs and flows. People's interest and understanding, it changes all the time.
If you are a superstar, or whatever you want to call yourself, a person who's had outrageous success, and you decide to go indie and tell the record companies to screw themselves? That takes a certain amount of courage. And bullheadedness, really.
When you're playing in front of people, everything is external. It's all going from you out to an audience. When you're in a studio, it's very internalised, it's going from the air through you into this meticulously crafted, layered piece of work.
Around 1974, I graduated into the occult, and spent a sold six or seven years immersed in the Kabala and the Chaldean, Celtic, and Druidic traditions I also became fascinated with Aleister Crowley, the nineteenth-century magician who shared these beliefs.
I've always been a spontaneous singer. And all the stuff that you hear on the end of the songs, what they call the ad libs - that just comes out of my head. That's not thought out at all. I have the verses and the choruses, and then after that it's total improvisation.