Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The movie has called it closed. I'm not saying I won't ever listen to 'Les Miserables' again. But it closed the door for me. It's gone its own way.
Hal Prince and Andrew actually asked me if I would be interested in continuing with 'Phantom', but obviously I was under contract to 'Les Mis' by then.
I was always that kid. When I got ice cream, I put it in my eye. When I got my license, I got pulled over so many times for playing 'Les Mis' too loud.
I love Les Beaux Peeps. Everyone in that band works together really well. I used to go out to see bands a lot; now it seems there just aren't any I like.
Every year I go to Broadway to see a musical - I like the music. I saw 'Mamma Mia;' I saw 'Les Miserables;' I saw 'Phantom of the Opera' like six, seven times.
With my family as my audience, I used to sing, dance, and reenact every scene from 'Grease,' 'Newsies' and 'Les Miserables' as many times as they would let me.
I've heard everyone do 'Bring Him Home' from 'Les Miserables.' When Colm Wilkinson did it, I truly never thought I would hear anyone as good, never mind better.
I can't comprehend that I'm in the film of 'Les Miserables.' It's one of those dreams I thought would be unattainable for someone like me, who came from nowhere.
My first Gibson was a '91 Les Paul Custom tobacco burst. I still have it - it's still amazing-sounding - but it took me a long time of saving up to get that guy!
I can't stand tribute bands. It's nice, bless 'em, but it's not right. They can't capture the right spirit. You never see a tribute comedian, a tribute Les Dawson.
If you had of told me age 10 that in 19 years time I would be on a stage in Salford performing with Les Dennis in a sitcom I had written, I would have believed you.
I spent summers in my room listening to cast albums, like 'Les Miserables,' every night. I knew it backwards and forwards. I want to be the first black Jean Valjean.
Gerry Schoenfeld told me 'Les Parents Terribles' was not going to sell, even though we had Kathleen Turner and Jude Law in the cast. So we called it 'Indiscretions.'
I always use my Les Paul. I have a Hamer as well. I use a Tele and an Esquire - once in a while, I will use a Strat, and I never use any pedals... except for in my car.
My favorite is still the one that I started off with, which is a Les Paul Standard. I've played that at every gig I've ever had. And that's my starting point in the studio.
If I'm in the country, my big idea is to do nothing. It means talking, it means cooking with the leftovers in the fridge - l'art d'accommoder les restes - it means gardening.
My go to karaoke song is 'Stars' from 'Les Mis', which is Javert's song. And it's super strange, and every time it comes on people are really weirded out, but that's what I do.
There's sort of an open offer to work with a guy in Los Angeles who does big band and orchestra arrangements who was at least an acquaintance to Les Baxter before he passed away.
My first reaction when I watched Les Miserables was, 'Wow, my hair looks good!' They put half a wig in, and I was always kinda worried it was gonna make my head look twice as big!
There's great cars, and then there's Aston Martins. Same thing for the 1959 Les Paul - it's an authentic piece of art that can never truly be replicated, and its mysteries are special.
Milan Kundera was my literature professor. He's a Francophile, so he made us read French novels like 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses,' which I made a version of many years later as 'Valmont.'
Growing up in Dallas, my first influences on the guitar were T-Bone Walker and Les Paul. T-Bone taught me how to play lead guitar behind my head and do the splits in 1951 when I was nine.
Couture has a power that ready-to-wear can never have; the attention of les petites mains as they sew; all that love and belief goes into the cloth. That's what you feel when you wear it.
In the modern operas that 'Miss Saigon' and 'Les Miz' are, nobody breaks out into song from conventional book dialogue. Everything is sung from beginning to end, including the recitative.
I just wanted to see every single musical I could. The very first one I saw was 'Beauty and the Beast,' the only one I could get tickets for, and then 'Les Miserables' and then 'Chicago.'
With every side I've played for, I've always tried to fit in and joke with my team mates while enjoying good times with them on and off the pitch. And that's what's happened with Les Bleus.
The last thing the theatre owners wanted was for people who spent $200 to see 'Les Miserables' to come out again and see the real miserable children of America, right there on the sidewalk.
I listened to John Denver and Simon & Garfunkel. Edith Piaf was a huge favourite. Then I discovered musicals - I loved 'Les Miserables' - and, at about 14, I started listening to David Gray.
It's fun, but the fun is where it always was. I mean, it's still fun to strap on my Les Paul in the basement and turn up the Marshall amp. I'm still 15. I still enjoy that as much as I ever did.
I couldn't not play a Les Paul guitar. Les always used to point to my Strat and say, 'Why do you have that piece of crap around your neck?' I'd say, 'Yours are too heavy. I had to drill holes in it.'
This sounds geeky, but when I run, I like to listen to musicals like 'Les Miserables.' The soundtracks are 75 minutes or longer, and I keep going until the story ends, so it feels like a good workout.
Since 2002, there has been a wave of attacks against Jewish 'persons or property' in France, a great many of them committed by young men living outside Paris, in the vast ghettos called les banlieues.
You could do a 'Les Mis'-type musical about Hamilton, but it would have to be 12 hours long, because the amount of words on the bars when you're writing a typical song - that's maybe got 10 words per line.
When I was playing Marius in the inaugural production of 'Les Mis,' I contracted glandular fever which developed into a post-viral depression. I was 23 and I couldn't see any light at the end of the tunnel.
In terms of specific cinematic influences, certainly I'd recommend 'Juan de los Muertos,' and I also really love this French zombie movie - 'Les Revenants' - where the dead reanimate for no apparent reason.
I'm sort of standing on T-Bone Walker's shoulders, Les Paul's shoulders, Lightnin' Hopkins' shoulders, Muddy Waters' shoulders, you know? And if I've inspired other people, I'm pleased. That pleases me greatly.
My first trip abroad was to do a TV version of 'Les Miserables' in France with Anthony Perkins. There I was at 12 acting with the guy from 'Psycho.' My parents were teachers, and it was hard for them to relate to that world.
I used a '57 Les Paul on one track, 'These Walls', which features Alam Khan on sarod. I tuned it way down because the sarode is naturally in C but I tuned the guitar down to D and he came up to D. It was all a pretty simple setup.
I went to a performing arts school. I went to an audition for a musical, 'Les Miserables,' in the West End, and I got in, and my parents were like, 'Oh, you can sing?' So I kind of started singing properly when I was, like, seven.
When I first left the Eagles, I said, 'That's it. I'm going to play golf.' After 10 days, it was like... there has to be more to life! I can still swing a golf club, and don't forget, Les Paul played until he literally passed away.
I'm doing 'Les Miserables,' the movie. I've done a lot of musicals and a lot of movies, and I know there are not a lot of people in Hollywood who have been down those two paths so I've been like, 'Come on, let's do a movie/musical.'
It's sad when you see most of your friends in the business gone, like Tommy Cooper, Frankie Howard, Eric Morecambe, Roy Castle, Les Dawson. They were very dear to me. You no longer have the chance to bump into them at a celebrity do.
During one performance of 'Les Miserables,' the barricade didn't leave the stage, so we had to actually end up finishing the second act with the barricades on the stage, which was very strange... doing the love scene on the barricade.
I designed a guitar for Ibanez and then they started manufacturing it - it's called the Jem - it's 26 years old and I still play it. As a kid I liked Les Pauls and Strats, but they had limitations for the kind of playing I wanted to do.
There are bands that I am friends with, who will invite me up on stage. Like Les Savy Fav, who have had me on stage, and I have played on their record. There are a couple of bands like that. Yo La Tengo has invited me to play with them.
My guitar is a mutation between a classic Fender Stratocaster guitar, which I played for years, and a Gibson solid-body like an SG or a Les Paul. It contains all sounds of the basic classic rock n' roll guitars. It does what I want it to do.
I started off when I was seven years old doing musicals. I was in 'Les Miserables' and 'The Sound of Music,' and my mum's an actress. My parents divorced when I was young, and when she couldn't find a babysitter, I was in the wings, sleeping.
I remember listening to 'Low End Theory': I had been kicked out of high school. I was in GED school in the LES, and all I could do was listen to 'Low End Theory.' I was in a strange time in my life, and 'Low End Theory' kind of defined that time.
There's something about uninterrupted singing that just doesn't work for me, because at some point, I need my characters to talk. Without meaning to offend anyone, a musical like 'Les Miserables' would be the last thing I'd ever be interested in.
Sure, 'Les Miserables' can be melodramatic. And seeing the musical instead of reading the novel will save you some time and spare you the long part where Hugo goes on and on about the Parisian sewer system. But I would hate for the novel to lose that.