Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I love guys like Charlie Parker.
I'm not interested in a rock/jazz fusion.
All our wives are experimental psychologists.
It's great fun to play with a really good band.
Singing, for me, means singing as loud as I can.
Rock music is being systematically merged with fashion.
It wouldn't bother me at all not to play on my own album.
We are constantly competing with the monsters from the id.
Let's face it, us '60s folks had pretty high expectations.
Some places you play in America, it's like 'On the Waterfront.'
I don't think that the Grammys are in any way a just way of grading music.
'8 Miles to Pancake Day' is a reconciliation of the classic space-time dilemma.
Going out and looking for managers is like going out and looking for rattlesnakes.
You have a kid, and it's like, 'He's gotta go to college! Gotta have some clothes!'
I'm a self-taught musician aside from what I've been able to pick up from other players.
'Gaucho' was a struggle for us for a lot of reasons, and in the end, we just sort of survived it.
There was a time in my life when one aspect of my lifestyle called for watching a lot of television.
I listen to a mixture of old jazz, contemporary, pop, some world beat stuff and various odds and ends.
It seemed like the more complex the music we were playing, the less able we were to guarantee its consistency.
I thought Twitter was a joke. I really thought it was a gag. I thought it was like National Lampoon or the Onion.
We try to write things that work on a variety of levels at the same time: A sleek exterior with a turbulent lyric.
We've been allowed to operate unmolested on the fringes of the music scene, really. That's where we enjoy it most.
From a linguistic point of view, you can't really take much objection to the notion that a show is a show is a show.
I'm glad we turned into a big-time touring band later in life. In fact, it's almost like we planned it out that way.
If any artist abuses his audience as a means to any end, noble or ignoble, he better have a damn good reason for it.
We play rock & roll, but we swing when we play. We want that ongoing flow, that lightness, that forward rush of jazz.
If there's a strange way to do something, I would certainly like to know about it. I feel that I owe that to my public.
I can never believe how much time and energy and money and talent and everything else is being poured into horrible ideas.
With 'Aja,' there was a sort of happy conjunction between our tastes and the backgrounds and styles of studio musicians at the time.
I think we're right up there with Herman's Hermits and the other greats. Maybe somewhere between Herman's Hermits and the Gershwins.
People are really exercised about one particular thing, and that is themselves. They will bore you endlessly with their broken hearts.
I guess actually playing on the records and touring is a great forced practice regimen for me. And you learn a lot playing with people.
I think what television and video games do is reminiscent of drug addiction. There's a measure of reinforcement and a behavioural loop.
Cynicism, I contend, is the wailing of someone who believes that things are, or should be, or could be, much, much better than they are.
If you're playing in a room that holds 15,000 people, it's just a question of how bad the room acoustics are and in what way they're bad.
I think every time, before we do an album, we have a discussion where we sort of consider the idea of doing something radically different.
ABC had all these schlocky, bubblegum acts, and we had to come up with suitable material for them. In which we were amazingly unsuccessful.
I always look for the weirdest note to land on. I felt that that was the least I could do for the great musical traditions which I've spawned.
Most of the time when people say something sounds like Steely Dan, and I listen to it, it doesn't. And I'm not even sure what they're talking about.
Given a choice between Charlie Mingus and Eric Dolphy or Joe Strummer and Lou Reed, there was no choice. I like Reed and Strummer, but it's kiddie music.
When the first album came out and I heard 'Do It Again' on the radio, that was the greatest thing that had ever happened. After that, it was all downhill.
I spent a couple of years not doing any music or anything, just here in Hawaii trying to get healthy and adjust to the new regimen I was setting up for myself.
What about that Dave Brubeck live album, with a version of 'Like Someone in Love' on it, and long sax solos by Paul Desmond? That's what got me hooked on jazz.
We opened for the Kinks, the Beach Boys, the Guess Who, Chuck Berry, Sha Na Na. We opened for Cheech and Chong - I opened for Cheech, and Don opened for Chong.
In the '70s, my playing was completely untutored, but it sounded good to me, and I tried to find ways to make those very simple things work in more ambitious contexts.
The more of what our music does violates the premise of its format that it's presented in, the better. So, hearing our music in the supermarket, a Muzak version, is great.
You can't always count on the devices, attitudes, and conceits that stood you in good stead in 1972 or 1973, or 1978-79, to still have the same impact all these years later.
That's sort of what we wanted to do: conquer from the margins, sort of find our place in the middle based on the fact that we were creatures of the margin and of alienation.
I think that there's the self-imposed pressure to come up with something that's good. For guys like us, that's much more important than any external pressure could really be.
I think the audience for Limp Bizkit is probably not going to be particularly interested in what we're doing. I don't think they'll find much that satisfies them in what we do.