Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Traffic was very, very free. It was great.
If you take the time away, you take the character away.
Far From Home was also my idea from a magazine I'd seen.
Guys would hang out in groups just to be with the music.
You have to have a strong title. It's got to say something.
You try to be moody when you're young and it had a good ring to it.
We all had a desire and appreciation for such a wide range of music.
Mr. Fantasy was the only song that was scribbling on a piece of paper.
So the name of a group has to say something. The name has to be strong.
I think you do better when you are really up for it, cause passion goes up.
You know, I had the ability like a catalyst to really get everybody hyped up.
There I met Gordon Jackson and Dave Meredith who were playing in local bands.
I turned everybody on so, psychologically, I guess I was pushing the boundaries creativity.
For me, naming bands was the forerunner to really writing lyrics, because I work off titles.
Because I would just tell everyone it was going to be great and just put that belief in them.
We all ended up jumping up and down, hugging each other when Ali won; cause Ali is the greatest.
But then you have to write a song, so at that point, I picked up the reins and started to write lyrics.
After that, I specifically started writing lyrics. I would like sweat and think and get it all together.
The States are great. I'd like to go just to see life, see things and hear people talk. It's like a circus where different acts go on at the same time.
We played at a club called, the Elbow Room. Don Carlos, the nightclub owner, was very hip and a very important person who made a big impact on my life.
It's a sort of philosophy you cook up for yourself. You probably write things the same as everybody else, but it's your own personal way of saying things.
This kind of music was just hitting England, so we were getting this following in clubs in Birmingham just cause we were trying to do something different.
They gave it to us for about five bucks a week, and we just went there to live. Probably the first band that ever did that back then and it became the famous cottage.
I have always had a tremendous amount of energy and any band I was ever in from the age of fourteen, I would always be the one who would describe the future and vibe everyone up.
I like to hear songs which can lay it all on, songs which can look at the dark side as well as the bright side, sometimes they can be as strong as each other. Love and hatred are close.
This was an important part of my life. But it was also sad that we didn't play there, cause we had such alot of fans that were waiting for us and Brazilians are great people. It's now my second home.
I have to confess that a strong contributing factor was that I had just taken what was probably the first acid ever made, given to me by a guy called Johnny Fellows, who had just returned from America.
It's strange the way people hear and see things. Like going to films - violent films. To me, seeing violence in a film makes me hate the violence. But there's beauty in violence if it's put over the right way.
Everything that Traffic ever did, I'd give Steve a complete lyric, titled, written out with the verse, the bridge, the shape and rhyme and then Steve had to figure out how the meter of the words would fit musically.
I was half asleep lying there writing this lyric in my head at about 3:30 in the morning. I woke Steve up with this idea and then we went into the living room where there was a little upright piano and finished the song. I wonder where that piano is now?
If you have words and want to write music for them, the words hit you with a feeling which you can't really describe in words, and so what you do is to put music to them and in this way you make contact with the words, through the musical thing. It happens when two feelings come together and they do something together and they compliment each other.