Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm not just a Sixties act.
Brian Jones was a big friend of mine.
Art is really more musical than it is visual.
The human voice is one of the most attractive things.
I really like to do small venues. They're more intimate.
I've always been accused of being too clever for my own good.
I can't even get people to spell my name right in my own biography!
I just keep to myself and live in the country and visit the cities.
And I had such a great working experience with Paul during the 'RAM' album.
I've retreated to what I was originally, which is an individual songwriter.
In the studio is one thing, but playing live is the important part, I think.
I've no real musical training, although I took some piano lessons a while ago.
Music is progressive, you get out, you experiment with new people and you grow.
So I wouldn't see Wings as a band that would go into the Hall of Fame, to be honest.
My sisters and my brother were all very much into music. A couple of them were dancers.
Everyone tried to be a singer other than just a player. We had four voices in The Moody Blues.
The Moody Blues was very big in France, because they liked that we were basically playing blues.
Tribute bands have kind of taken over the market, and I don't want to come across as being that.
John Bonham was a good friend of mine. I knew him a bit as a kid. I hung out with him quite a lot.
I was brought up on listening to 78 rpm records from crooners to opera singers to solo piano players.
I was doing something of my own after I left The Moody Blues, I went away, lived in Spain for a while.
My fondest memories are of being hidden away in Scotland or Spain writing and working on songs for Wings.
Wonderful Christmas Time' is a Christmas song but it was supposed to be an attempt at a traditional song.
I enjoyed the idea of going and playing live. My beef was always with Wings that we never played live enough.
I was part of that whole early Moody Blues transitioning from a sort of R&B-blues band to being more progressive.
Paul forced the Beatles to work a lot harder than they would have otherwise, and he did the same thing with Wings.
'Mull of Kintyre' was the biggest single of all time up until 'Don't They Know It's Christmas' by that big charity.
Colin Blunstone did a cover of one of my songs, and the reason I liked it was he changed it completely from my version.
But I'm more of a recluse when it comes down to being a writer and being a creative person rather than being a celebrity.
I've lived in England, France, Spain, Portugal and Germany in the '80s. I don't like being settled. It's not really healthy.
Traveling around, coming down to Florida for a few days, it's fun! You go on the road, you get inspired to write other stuff.
After Wings I did a lot of recording rather than live work. I even went into a kind of semi-retirement to places like Spain at one point.
When you go to a new country, you don't have the same facilities as you had in the one before. You adapt very quickly to the circumstances.
I'm not oriented by money, to be honest. Everybody thinks we're in the music business for money all of the time. But that's not true for me.
I wrote 'No Words' and 'Mull of Kintyre' with help from Paul. He was always like a big brother to me and a strong influence on my songwriting.
I don't really own anything. It makes me more fluent, er, fluid. More fluent, too, because I've learned a lot of languages by traveling around.
In the sixties when Paul was with the Beatles and I was with the Moody Blues, we shared the same bill and tried to blow each other off the stage.
Nostalgia is one thing. It's great to go and play the old songs. People know them and appreciate them. You got to give them what they want to hear.
Paul and I were friends, the Moody Blues toured with the Beatles on the second British tour. That developed into me working with Paul, whom I always admired.
That's what I tend to do - get into a band, and then it gets busy… and you want to get away from it all again. That's what happened with the Moodies and Wings.
Early on I was more interested in gypsy jazz music until rock and roll came around and I listened to a lot of Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran and skiffle singer Lonnie Donegan.
The thing is, I was more blues-oriented, more of a purist than in the pop world. That led me into a folk rock trio and to Ginger Baker before I started recording on my own.
I began writing with Mike Pinder and eventually we went on to form a new band called The M&B, which later became The Moody Blues, what I would call a progressive blues band.
The Moody Blues were a blues band, so when we got discovered, we were taken to London. That's where we started to make it. That's where the record labels were. That's where the action was.
One of my earliest inspirations was the 'Allan-a-Dale' character played by Elton Hayes in the 1954 movie 'The Story Of Robin Hood And His Merrie Men.' He was a wandering minstrel with his guitar.
I had to make a name up, and it came from one of my sisters; she was a fan of Frankie Laine. The 'Denny' thing, in those days, everyone had a backyard, and a den to hang out. I think I got that nickname there.
Paul knew I could sing, write and play, and so he rang me. It knocked me sideways a little because I wasn't used to being a sidekick. That was the first time I'd been with a band with someone more famous than me.
You can't keep away from the public too much, but you had to be protected to some degree and I saw that in Paul a lot. People were obsessive about the Beatles. It's a hard thing to have to deal with being that famous.
Band on the Run' was pretty significant for me because two of the guys didn't turn up to record it. It was just me and Paul. The two of us had to go into the studio and make that album ourselves. With Linda of course.
There's no real animosity, anymore... Me and Paul had a good team and we still are a good team. When Lennon died, Paul said he was never going to let that happen again, he was never going to fall out with anyone again.