Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's always been difficult to make a good record. To be perfectly honest with you, it's really about the person that's pushing the buttons. No matter what type of equipment you have, you still have to have a certain talent to be able to make a good record.
The eighties turned the whole system upside down. They would sign three groups and give them five or ten million dollars each to make three records. Out of those three records maybe one would be a hit. The economy changed, and that's why the music changed.
As long as Elton John can bring forth one performance per album on the order of 'Someone Saved My Life Tonight,' the chance remains that he will become something more than the great entertainer he already is and go on to make a lasting contribution to rock.
Aretha Franklin's 'Let Me in Your Life' is one of the few recent R&B albums that places the emphasis entirely and deservedly on a voice. Many R&B producers have been making records on which the singer is outshined by the song, the arrangement and the sound.
I've never been bored in my life, man. I've never been bored or lonely. Are you kidding? No way! I'm an orchestrator, a musician, a producer. I love everything. I've studied languages from Farsi to Greek to French, Swedish, Russian... How can you get bored?
I've looked at pictures that my mom has of me, from when I was four years old at the turntable. I'm there, reaching up to play the records. I feel like I was bred to do what I do. I've been into music, and listening to music and critiquing it, my whole life.
When you're spending your money for a nice outing, you want to go have a good time. And I always thought comedies, laughing, was something that was made for entertainment on that level. And records and maybe TV and stuff like that is really made to be heavy.
I don't mind being an advocate for weed. It's not as bad as tobacco, alcohol or firearms, for that matter. There's no reason it shouldn't be legalized. You can make all kinds of stuff out of hemp. I think the cure for cancer's probably in cannabis-who knows?
I'm trying to cut down a little on eating, on sodium, keep my blood pressure down, which is tough. Because I love food! I do, but it's unfair how everything that's bad for you tastes so good, and all the good stuff, veggies and green things, doesn't match up.
From the time I was 9 years old, I loved magic. I was an only child, and I think that had a big impact on me. I always had grown-up friends even though I was a little kid. I would take the train from Lido Beach into Manhattan, and I'd hang out in magic shops.
My friends who are not from Sweden tell me that I'm more reserved or maybe more ... I guess the opposite of what a Latin American would be. Maybe because Scandinavians are more careful with their words and I guess it takes a lot to become a friend of a Swede.
I was always into bluegrass as a kid. Basically, I like music that has a basic simple structure and that has a lot of emotion and feel. Bluegrass and other old time music fits the bill, as well as what became punk - they both kind of have a similar framework.
I've discovered that Motown and Broadway have a lot in common - a family of wonderfully talented, passionate, hardworking young people, fiercely competitive but also full of love and appreciation for the work, for each other and for the people in the audience.
Success really comes down to the product, not to me, my personality, or what club I'm seen going into or coming out of. None of that matters. What's important is whether or not people feel like they wasted their time or money when they pay for a movie or a CD.
It was like the part of me that had enjoyed those friends had evaporated, leaving behind a huge, echoing emptiness, and I was scrabbling on the edge of it, trying not to fall into the hole within myself because I was terrified to find out how far down it went.
On the real though, just being so young, then coming out of the hood and making it is just crazy to see. Just picking up a microphone and coming from the block, then being able to go around the world and really staying yourself and staying true to who you are.
His [Michael Jackson] behavior was weird, but when you get an artist and a genius, many of the geniuses throughout our whole history were weird. And they did weird things because none of us could understand what was on their mind and why they did what they did.
I knew a dude whose entire check was going to his car. He didn't care. This is back when the Mustang 5.0 came out in, like, '82. Between paying the note and insurance, I think he had like $40 left. A lot of people knew people because of their car, and not them.
You can go raise the money outside of the industry, and then what you're doing is fighting with your money to get back into the industry, or for them to use your money instead of their own. So, you got to figure out how to do it within the flow of the industry.
I'm always constantly doing stuff with Beyonce in mind. Anytime I hear a beat I think she'll love, I'll put something to it and go from there and hopefully it's something that she's in the mood for doing.What exactly were you trying to accomplish with this song?
I set a Google Alert for myself, and now I'm seeing people say my music influenced them and how great it is all the time. Sometimes I listen to this stuff that's supposed to be influenced by me, and I can't hear myself in it. But I'd rather they say it than not.
The Rolling Stones are constantly changing, but beneath the changes they remain the most formal of rock bands. Their successive releases have been continuous extensions of their approach, not radical redefinitions, as has so often been the case with the Beatles.
I love the idea of finding new talent, however you do it, and the television mechanism - seeing artists grow and rise to the occasion - is a medium that actually works because there's a way for the audience to get to know an artist and for the artist to improve.
Bebop and hip-hop, in so many ways, they're connected. A lot of rappers remind me so much of bebop guys in terms of improvisation, beats and rhymes. My dream is to see hip-hop incorporated in education. You've got the youth of the world in the palm of your hand.
I don't even know what a traditional producer is or does. I feel like the job is like being a coach, building good work habits and building trust. You want to get to a point where you can say anything and talk about anything. There needs to be a real connection.
When I get the strength to leave, you always tell me that you need me. And I'm weak cause I believe you and I'm mad because I love you. So I stop and think that maybe you could learn to appreciate me, and it all remains the same that you ain't never gonna change.
I sequence during the entire recording process. The sequencing changes as I'm recording and as I'm listening. From when I'm, like, four songs in, I start trying to figure out which song should come after which. Which is important, and it changes as the album goes.
I hope everything works in our favor. The show is cool. It’s family fare. We ain’t aiming at the cheap seats. Instead, we’re making something with a broad appeal that people of any color or creed and from all walks of life can enjoy and maybe learn something from.
Just blow in it and sound bad for about a year and then make it sound a little bit better, and you get a little band together, and then you get a few jobs. You take four guys that sound half bad, but if they're 25 percent each, they can give 100 percent, you know?
I think everybody knows my sound because I'm me, you know? But, on your fourth album, I think you've definitely gotta show growth because I definitely don't plan on being one of those cats that fade off. It's always about growing with me; I grew up over the years.
When I sit down to make music, I try to enter a flow; I always open a blank session and just make something that I feel like making. Only after a piece of music is done does my frontal cortex allow me to organize what might be trying to come out of my subconscious.
Some people do rely too much on technology. Look, technology is wonderful and I love it. When I was in the UK and I had hit records I would also have a high tax bill at the end of the year, and that would be the time to buy up all the technology - it was write offs.
It's a really deep and layered psychological situation - making music with someone - if they're trying to make something real and personal. It's almost like dating: you allow yourself to be consumed by the other - not in a bad way, but in a way that happens in nature.
The best thing to do is to write about what you know, and if you write about what you know you can always pull those nice little tidbits that hook people, that shows that you know about this world and can bring people into a world that they may not know nothing about.
You got to have the right lawyer and good management. I went years and years without management and even a good lawyer; I used to handle contracts on my own, and it was definitely corners that they would cut. It wouldn't have happened if I had a good lawyer behind me.
When you're trying to bring the streets into rap to prove a point, then you already lost. You separate the two, and that ain't to be played with. You've got people that lost their lives and people that are doing real time. If we gon' make music, let's just make music.
I love Lady Gaga, Rihanna - all the pop girls like Katy Perry. I think Miley Cyrus is very talented, too. Apart from the visuals, which you may like or not like, but her music is quite good, actually. 'Wrecking Ball' is quite a good song, and she sang it really nicely.
The Stones were always exemplary of one of the best of all rock qualities: tightness. They have always been economical, the opposite of ornamental. Having a very clear idea of what they wanted to say they could go into a studio and make it all up on a three minute cut.
If it was all about me, I'd do a whole lot of pop records, make a whole lot of money, just rake in the dough. But it's never been all about me. It's all about being a voice for the voiceless. People who can't speak for themselves, who don't have a mic, don't have a say.
Well I listened to mostly rock music, and I felt like hip hop was like an extension of rock music when it was done well. So energetically, again I felt like it was in line with punk rock and maybe hard rock, more than it was in line with R&B, which I never really liked.
The drums were new to me; I was just playing what was in my head. I was a guitar player originally - so on the drums, I just played what was in my head rather than caring too much about what others were playing. And in that way, I came up with a simple but unique style.
I have a camp so I brought my writers, LaShawn Daniels and at the time, Anesha and Antea [Birchett], they were sisters, and this girl Delisha [Thomas] and Makeba [Riddick]. I brought basically five writers to work on different ideas. You either make the cut or you don't.
What is qualified? What have I been qualified for in my life? I haven't been qualified to be a mayor. I'm not qualified to be a songwriter. I'm not qualified to be a TV producer. I'm not qualified to be a successful businessman. And so, I don't know what qualified means.
Somebody approached me about working with Michael Jackson, and I did say no because I like working with new artists or people that I've worked with in the past. I can develop them from the ground up. There's no set standard that I have to live up to or anything like that.
I was inspired by a lot of people when I was young, every band that came through town, to the theater, or the dance hall. I was at every dance, every night club, listened to every band that came through, because in those days we didn't have MTV, we didn't have television.
I was inspired by a lot of people when I was young. Every band that came through town, to the theater, or the dance hall. I was at every dance, every night club, listened to every band that came through, because in those days we didn't have MTV, we didn't have television.
You see the genius that Whitney Houston has as an interpreter of material, and you realize why genius can be applied to only a few interpretive performers. She finds meaning and depth and soulfulness in a song that often the writer and composer never really knew was there.
I used to practice piano for hours, and now, with a synthesizer, you can input the music and the machine perfects the song. That's why we have so many people in the music business who should be plumbers. They don't really understand music because they haven't been trained.
Everyone deals with sadness and lack of love when they're kids, and all this abandonment. Most people do. Hopefully you want to learn something new, and you want to move on to this other place, and I think, for me, it was like, I really didn't know how to calm myself down.
But once I saw them [Jackson 5 during audition], I rushed out with my video camera to start taping them because I knew that they were something so special, mainly because of the lead singer, nine-year-old Michael Jackson. And it was just so obvious to me that he was a star.