Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I just think a hustler's ambition is that I never stop. I start off hustling and said I'll never stop hustling. An ambitious hustler is the one to hustle the hustlers. When I grew up, my heroes were hustlers. Now I'm their hero.
Generally, you're always shooting in the dark with Beyonce. She's just creative and eclectic and up on always trying to be ahead of the game. That was the moment of me trying to figure out how I wanted to give her another moment.
I've never had vocal training. No one could ever say that they helped me carve what my voice has become. It's just been more of self-training: me just continuously going into the studio every night and trying out different beats.
When I remixed U2's "Even Better Than the Real Thing," that was a big moment and turning point for me. One of my remixes became "the big remix" for them and then I went on tour and was living on the road with them for six months.
The people who make it to the top - whether they're musicians, or great chefs, or corporate honchos - are addicted to their calling ... [they] are the ones who'd be doing whatever it is they love, even if they weren't being paid.
After every war, there was a significant change in the music, and I can understand how that happened. If you participate in protecting the country, you think you can be part of it, but you come back home and it's worse than ever.
I really love customising certain songs for certain people. No matter what weight that comes with it - whether it comes with it not being a number one on the Top 100 or whatever. I'd rather write someone a career defining record.
I think there's a certain poetry to having your body reflect what you feel inside of you. Perhaps you have a feeling that's so pure, or overwhelming inside of you that your body disfigures to it - contortions match your confusion.
I'm so bad at lyrics. I'm always trying to get better. Sometimes, the song can restrict your lyrics - if you're trying to make a poppy song, you don't want to sing something that sounds like it could be on an At the Drive-In song.
Working with kids in Soweto in South Africa, it's rough out there. But the bottom line is you've got to go to know. In Cambodia, there are 10,000 landmines. Same in Afghanistan, same in Colombia. I'm totally addicted to traveling.
Dee Dee got the name 'The Ramones' from Paul McCartney. McCartney would call himself Paul Ramon when he checked into hotels and didn't want to be noticed. I liked it because I thought it was ridiculous. The Ramones? That's absurd!
I was in Studio 54 one time; it was great. But I'm not a discotheque guy. Sometimes, if I had a new demo, I went to some discotheques to check it out - see how the reactions of the people were. But just to dance, I rarely did that.
Whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him. Or give it up. This is not a game of cards. This is your life and mine. I've spent a whole lifetime building this and as long as I'm in charge, nobody is going to knock it down.
When you're 17 and you have an idea, people don't really listen to you. I came out of an environment where my parents were always pushing me to do what I wanted and be creative, and I was not used to the industry's way of thinking.
It struck me at some point that the things I wanted to say had to be wordless. I had to renounce words in order to go deep into the practice of making materials and textures that would express what I'm trying to say more accurately.
But with rap music - not just N.W.A. - but rap music in general, seeing these artists wearing these team logos all the time started bringing a synergy and energy about having to rep your city, your team, everywhere and all the time.
The devil made you a slave. Your waitin' for the devil to come from the ground. Take a look around. Just look at the cross that the priest is holdin'. A beast, in sheep's clothin'. You are the prince of darkness. Hell born, demonic.
It's a great story. It's available for anyone else who wants to try it. We're not brilliant. We're not unbelievable. We're just two people who hit a nerve. I think it can be done again and again and again. More people should try it.
Embrace what makes up you. Some stereotypes are true - I love chicken, but that's a stereotype, I love f**king basketball, but that's a stereotype, too. But who cares? Embrace it. Be who you are, and don't be ashamed of what that is.
I'm just trying to make my favorite music. That's how I work; I just do things based on the way they feel to me. I want to be touched by the music I'm making. Luckily, other people have shared that response to my work over the years.
Arthur Russell is very important to me on many levels, and when I read Tim Lawrence's biography on him, 'Hold on to Your Dreams,' one of the things I took away was: first thought, best thought. I live by that when I make my own music.
No one's selling records anymore, so there's no income you're being robbed of. I think that you should be in alignment with the world. The world is about sharing now, so as long as it's out there, it should be there. I think it's fine.
I just want people to hear the music the way it's suppose to sound, the way we meant for them to hear it. You sit in the studio all this time and make the music, tweak it, try to get it perfect. They should be able to hear it that way.
Hiphop allows you to get your love ones, your family members up out of the hood and that sh-t sounds cliché, but it's true. So when I think of hiphop, I just think of all the opportunity it's provided, of all the places it's taking me.
Originally a record producer more or less hired a bunch of professionals to participate in a recording session, the performers and the technicians, and a music director was put in charge. That directly related to a film producer's job.
I love vocal music, but I've had a hard time understanding myself through the English language. So it just seemed to me that if I relied solely on creating a voice out of the music, then I might be able to reach something more profound.
I like to tell the streets what the political climate is, and I like to tell any politicians that's listening what the streets think. And sometimes people get nicked up and bruised up, but I usually have a lot of good medicine for that.
I know that in the rap game you've got a lot of people, that come from poverty, was born in poverty and if it wasn't for hiphop they'd still be living in that. So when I think of hiphop, I think hiphop saves lifes, hiphop changes lives.
The Ramones were not about having a good time. The closest thing probably was maybe Joey and Dee Dee might have had some good times, but it was almost like a work ethic. We were out there to basically to get the fans to see the Ramones.
My introduction of Whitney was that if there's going to be one performer for the next generation who combined the beauty and lyric phrasing of a Lena Horne with those Gospel fiery roots of an Aretha Franklin, it would be Whitney Houston.
It's easier for me to get comedies made because of my track record. Everybody needs to find their niche. I love dramas, but I understand that I am still just a young man in moviemaking. I know there will be some time to get back to that.
'Sing It Again Rod' touches all the solo bases since Stewart's departure from the Jeff Beck Band, wherein he cut his teeth on American audiences for $75 a week plus expenses, and wisely ignores his generally inferior work with the Faces.
In between 15 and 20 - probably at around 17 - my interests switched from hard rock to punk rock. And then by 20 they were circling out of punk rock back into Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, the stuff that I didnt get to when I was younger.
When I came out with 'Posse on Broadway,' I decided, enough with trying to imitate New York, enough with trying to imitate L.A., let's just be Seattle. And rock, grunge, followed right after 'Posse on Broadway' and Seattle just exploded.
The process of creativity, absorbing aspects of life and channeling it into something shared or tangible - that's my ideal brain food. The irony to this is that the more creative I have became, the less I listen to of other peoples music.
In between 15 and 20 - probably at around 17 - my interests switched from hard rock to punk rock. And then by 20 they were circling out of punk rock back into Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, the stuff that I didn't get to when I was younger.
My years with Aretha Franklin have been very special, as were the years making records with Dionne Warwick. Other highlights include working with Janis Joplin, who was the first artist I ever signed, as well as Patti Smith and Alicia Keys.
If an artist knows you have respect for their talent - which I have to feel to my core, to sign them - they know that you're in their corner. That doesn't mean you have to be 'mum' on everything; it doesn't mean you can't raise your voice.
When we started Aftermath, we had something like 20 artists, and it was driving me crazy. I couldn't sit down and focus on any of it. Plus, it was doubly hard because you ended up crushing these people's dreams when you had to let them go.
We fight every night, now that's not kosher I reminisce with bliss of when we was closer And wake up to be greeted by an argument again You act like you're ten So immature, I try to concentrate on a cure And keep lookin' at the front door.
A good movie is a movie that you could see over and over again, not a movie that wins a Oscar, or a movie that makes a lot of money. It's a movie that you personally can watch over and over again. That, to me, is a measure of a good movie.
James Taylor may be an all-American boy but he isn't Horatio Alger, and the lionizing of many rock stars by the rock press has as much to do with old fashioned rags-to-riches stories as does the straight culture's deification of its idols.
Bob Dylan has always sealed his decisions with the unexplainable. His motives for withholding the release of the magnificent 'Basement Tapes' will be as forever obscure as Brian Wilson's reasons for the destruction of the tapes for 'Smile.'
And the young people in the 1960's identified with it immediately, because, I guess the young people had been having years of repression really. They felt that the, you know, after the war everything was very austere, particularly in Europe.
Chicago, we always had it. People just shied away because it's nothing businesswise from the industry. Everybody from Chi will go to N.Y.C. or L.A. - R. Kelly to Kanye to even Twista. Everybody is great from there, but it's nothing downtown.
Elton John himself never seems pretentious but Bernie Taupin's lyrics often do - sometimes pretentious in a clever sort of way, but pretentious nonetheless. There is a conflict between Elton's and Bernie's personal styles, no doubt about it.
I feel more meditative when I don't have a home. I like being put into a new place and making friends with people from a different culture, trying to find the lines of communication. It's a lot of reflection of myself and seeing new scenery.
A lot of people have said 'people should see you work in the studio,' because a lot of people don't realize I'm an actual engineer. I don't walk in and have some guy grab the board. I have my own studio and soldered every wire in the studio.
When the Atlanta Braves were owned by Ted Turner, he was very passionate and did whatever it took to do something good - and eventually he made money. Labels used to be the same way. Now they're corporations, and it's only about their stock.
The ukulele was the first of many instruments they had bought for me. They got me a guitar when I was eleven, which my son Morgan uses until this day. They paid for 3 years of guitar lessons; they bought me a bass fiddle, which I still play.