I was very drawn to music of all types, from Beethoven to Jimi Hendrix. There were musicians and composers who obviously were expressing a vision that was beyond the mundane.

As I look back over my life, before I had any real identity, I was a traveler. I grew up an Army brat, a runaway, an activist, and a musician. All my life I've been traveling.

But in Delhi, people love artists. They love any musician, any actor; anybody from the art field who visits from the entertainment industry, gets an amazing response in Delhi.

When someone is a musician - trying to make a living off being a public figure - it's really easy for people to see me as a face on a screen that doesn't have a personal life.

To be a musician, especially a singer-songwriter - well, you don't do that if you have a thriving social life. You do it because there's an element of alienation in your life.

Whenever I felt happy about having discovered something, the first encounter, not only with the public, with other musicians, with specialists, etc, was that they rejected it.

The deeper I get into my life as a musician, I'm discovering that it becomes less and less about other people, and more about what I want to do. And that's a good place to be.

I'm a musician, so for the most part I've always thought that the musicians were equally as inspiring to listen to - maybe more so, in some cases - in addition to the artists.

I always loved the look of musicians. I've always admired them because they have a look - when I was growing up, it seemed that the ones I liked didn't need to have a stylist.

I would not describe myself as an avid jazz fan and I am not a jazz musician myself. However, that is not to say that jazz does not play a vital and important role in my life.

A lot of young musicians get the money at the wrong time. They get it for something they don’t feel great about, and it’ll make you feel so bad it’ll destroy you and kill you.

When I went to college, I thought I was going to become a professional musician. I was a French horn player, so I went to Yale to study with a very unusual French horn player.

I don't wanna talk about Teo [Macero]. He's a helluva musician, a brilliant musician, but he's just not for me, that's all. I can elaborate on it, but I don't want to do that.

When I was 19, I made my first good week's pay as a club musician. It was enough money for me to quit my job at the factory and still pay the rent and buy some food. I freaked.

Folk musicians have a lot of the same self-importance, but they're way more cruel and jealous than rock musicians - I know this for a fact because I used to be a folk musician.

It just seems like musicians want to sell a few records and put out a perfume line, and I think it's so sad that there are so many musicians who don't want to change the world.

I also had a brother who was like me a musician and a composer. A man of great talent, far more gifted than I. He died very young... he killed himself in the prime of his life.

I have a real love of sound and the shape of the sound. I'm a musician, and I'm fascinated with the effects of sound, and tone, and pitch and melody and all that sort of stuff.

I was always funny, but I wasn't a great musician, and I wanted to be a musician way more than I wanted to be a comic. I just didn't think comedians were cool when I was a kid.

Lou Reed's music has been in the lives of millions of people all over the world for decades. He had a truly universal presence and was respected by musicians across all genres.

People expect you to be this weird cartoon sometimes when you're a musician. I hate that. I hate standing out. I hate people looking at me. I just want to be part of the crowd.

Ultimately, musicians of the world must come to realize the potential of their calling... If the musician is illuminated from within, he becomes a lamp that lights other lamps.

I know that I'm capable of moving around on the guitar. I can express myself the way I want to and feel good about it. But as far as technical chops, I'm not a learned musician.

To have read the greatest works of any great poet, to have beheld or heard the greatest works of any great painter or musician, is a possession added to the best things of life.

I do a lot of touring, yes, and I have my whole life ever since I was 19 years old, when I used to tour with Al Jarreau, Rickie Lee Jones, and Jackson Browne as a side musician.

Don't forget, I was a musician long before I ever met Prince. That's a big difference between me and those other women he's worked with. We operate on the same plane, as equals.

A mathematician will recognise Cauchy, Gauss, Jacobi or Helmholtz after reading a few pages, just as musicians recognise, from the first few bars, Mozart, Beethoven or Schubert.

I can imagine lyrics becoming better written by smart machines rather than stupid musicians. Songwriters generally have nothing to say. They may as well be replaced by machines.

You can have all sorts of relationships, but there's something with musicians working together where you can have relationship that can just continue to grow in a beautiful way.

It's important to be a divergent musician and do a little bit of everything, except you have to make sure your fans are aware of it and that you string them along the right way.

He has a method that likens the musician to an athlete, so I do physical exercises designed to keep a musician in shape in order to perform the function, which is to play music.

I think the most important thing about what musicians do is the music. You can be as big an arsehole as you want but if you're not making good music, you won't get away with it.

One problem with a lot of musicians is that they remove themselves in a studio and make a record and assume people are going to pay attention to it just because they've made it.

If you are a musician and you don't show any interest on the business level then you are actually vulnerable and people will rip you off. They will sweet talk you into anything.

I feel like that's what's going to be most respected at the end of the day, that I'm able to do so many different things and become less of a rapper and just more as a musician.

I'm not trying to stay away from being a celebrity, I'm not saying, 'I'm sooo not famous,' I'm trying to continue being a musician in a time when everyone is very celebrity-led.

You can't teach a young musician to compose any more than you can teach a delicate plant to grow, but you can guide him a little by planting a stick in here and a stick in there.

As an audience member, I like the sound of something that's been written - I like it to sound written. And then, of course, you can't do it without the musicians who can play it.

I'm no fan of jam bands. You can take your Gov't Mule, your Phish, your Rusted Root. But Derek Trucks is a special musician - perhaps the greatest slide guitarist who ever lived.

No, I've heard over the years that it's nice for them to see somebody who's like, you know, a well-known successful musician who's Asian. I've heard it from a few musicians, too.

A jazz musician can improvise based on his knowledge of music. He understands how things go together. For a chef, once you have that basis, that's when cuisine is truly exciting.

When I was a kid I wanted to be a musician. I used to play the trumpet. I practiced all the time, but I got braces and I couldn't play it anymore, so I had all of this free time.

For me, I work very self-contained. It's literally just me sitting in a room doing it until the very end of the process when other musicians come in and instruments are recorded.

I never wished to be a 'rock star.' I just wanted to be a working musician. My dreams didn't even go past a session player or a working musician. It was too far beyond my dreams.

We were brash young fellows. I was always hanging with the older crowd anyway. The musicians were the Hip Cats, and I was hanging with them anyway. I Just started out real early.

I was approached by Oxfam to go to Mali as their ambassador and get involved in their various initiatives out there. But I felt that was missing the point of using me, a musician

I realized that improvisers should probably always have time off. But musicians are always gigging and never have a chance to stop for a minute - unless something drastic occurs.

Who you are as a performer is one thing, but when you're making records, you're dealing with musicians' tastes, their goals, their wants, their needs, everyone's individual pride.

In order for me to be successful... In order to be a great artist - musician, actor, painter, whatever - you must be able to be private in public at all times. That is what we do.

Anyone who's got a guitar, you like to pick it up. I can play a couple of songs, some '50s rock and roll, a bit of Elvis. That's it, really - I'm not a musician, I'm not a singer.

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