Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I left Van Halen, I went in the studio and made a CD called Marching to Mars with all studio musicians. I did it immediately. With the disappointment riding on my shoulders of the breakup of the band.
In the neighborhood that I grew up in - in New York on Long Island - there were a lot of musicians. For some reason, that time in history in our town in New York, everybody played. So it was all around me.
I was doing without for so long, not knowing the things that are normal for musicians. I was getting bookings regardless, people phoning or emailing me direct, and journalists were writing about me anyway.
We are all musicians, and we're not really good musicians. But we have this gracious gift that has been bestowed on us, and we don't want to disappoint. So I guess our biggest fear would be, just giving up.
But recently I began to feel that maybe I wouldn't be able to do what I want to do and need to do with American musicians, who are imprisoned behind these bars; music's got these bars and measures you know.
What you learn from working with other performers and musicians is invaluable, really, and can only help you grow. I mean, if you spend your whole life focusing on yourself, you're not really learning much.
The art music of the West has developed through out its history by means of individual geniuses, and out of the soil supporting them; non-Western musicians were born, and grew like the grasses of the field.
People are afraid to ask musicians to be involved in projects because they anticipate being turned down. Young artists hesitate before contacting me. People in my position don't get approached often enough.
There is some sampling on my records and a lot of what I call replays, where I'd have musicians come in the studio and replay the sample from the original record. But mainly, we'd come up with our own music.
There are so many wonderful, wonderful musicians in the world, I cannot possibly make a distinction between the fact that they might play classical music, or bluegrass, or Irish traditional, or Indian music.
I would love to do a serious period drama. Oh, absolutely. I mean, you'll find most comedians want to do more serious stuff, most musicians want to be comedians, and most serious actors want to be musicians.
Session musicians kind of respected me because what I was talking about made sense. That all came from an education. Believe me, education does you more good. Maybe that's the reason I've been around so long.
There was the best teachers from the Czech Philharmonic, highly dedicated people, some of the best musicians in the world passing on the knowledge about the country, about the principles, and about the music.
Imagine if you grew up in a place where your lineage was there for a hundred years, and part of the culture was to play music 50 percent of the time. You'd probably have a lot of musicians in your family too.
I know a lot of people who are struggling musicians; it's a hard life, and I've risked being that. The rewards are tremendous now that I've made it, I thank God every day. But I put it all on the line for it.
The story of Rod Stewart, the story of Carlos Santana is so inspiring to young musicians because it shows in this trendy business how long a career can last. It shows how you can soar back, regardless of age.
The collective conscience of a hundred musicians is no light burden. Think for a moment of what it would mean to a pianist if by some miracle every key of his instrument should suddenly become a living thing.
Royalties are not how most writers or musicians make their living. Musicians by and large make a living with a relationship with an audience that is economically harnessed through performance and ticket sales.
The thrill of hearing your own voice recorded is still there, I still love it, going into the studio and thinking how can I sing this song and between the producers and the musicians you find a way of doing it.
First, it doesn't surprise me that traditional music has experienced a kind of exhaustion in the 20th century - not forgetting that many musicians started to look outside the traditional structures of tonality.
To pay 60 musicians for rehearsal and performance is quite something, and I decided I wouldn't be able to handle that kind of situation financially again, unless somebody else was taking care of that end of it.
Ultimately, what we do as musicians, I think of us as a type of emotional engineer. We essential take these sound waves, this sound, and we organize it into emotion, and that's how we connect with our audiences.
Well, in Japan, I have got a group of musicians that I have worked with a lot, that concentrate just on the hardcore stuff, say, that Naked City has been working on. We have like a repertoire of sixty songs now.
If drummers are 'anti-solo,' that's up to them. They're musicians, and they can play whatever they want. But my inspirations early on were people like Buddy Rich, seeing him on 'The Tonight Show', or Gene Krupa.
You could say that everything the musicians have learned and known over the years, all of their technical resources, are in a dialogue with the things they are discovering every time, as if it was the first time.
Orchestras are not used to playing the kind of stuff jazz musicians like to play. It requires a lot of rehearsal and recording time, so it's much easier to do on a synth or sampler. So, we came up with that idea.
What people really should be able to be confident in is that the standards of music- making that classically trained musicians present is elite, it is the best and all of us as artists should be committed to that.
I had sort of exhausted all the avenues playing in Detroit. So again, through the stewardship of my brother, I ended up in California and went to the Musicians Institute in L.A. I wanted to get better as a player.
Artists - musicians, painters, writers, poets - always seem to have had the most accurate perception of what is really going on around them, not the official version or the popular perception of contemporary life.
If you listen to a lot of the songs that are popular now, there's very little melody in there. People love the beat. But to musicians, it's melody, because we understand how elusive it is and how hard it is to hold.
If you're 100% yourself, then you're going to be different no matter what. I have this self-honesty approach as opposed to an ego that a lot of musicians put up. I can be myself, and that's just enough to stand out.
Thelonious Monk was one of the musicians I most connected with early on. I'm a huge Betty Carter fan, and the way that Abbey Lincoln and Shirley Horn grew immensely from the time they were young is so inspirational.
It's great to have all this stuff at home. But when you want to make it for real, there's still nothing like making music with a bunch of other great musicians in the same room. That's one thing that'll never change.
It's funny, when bands or younger musicians ask me: 'So, what does it take to make it?' Well, first explain to me what you mean by 'making it': Do you want to be a rock star or do you want music to be your livelihood?
Like Russell, I enjoy the fact that when I'm playing solo, if I want to do something completely spontaneous, I don't have to worry about how I'm going to cue the other musicians, or if it's something that's rehearsed.
Rooney was like marrying a high school sweetheart. And then you're like, 'I think we need some time to see other people,' and those other people are new musicians. Starsystem is like a new marriage with new musicians.
I'd been studying philosophy at the University of Chicago. I hadn't been doing well, because I was sitting in with jazz musicians at night - it's hard to read Heidegger, but it's especially hard if you're half asleep.
All the musicians I loved growing up were men. I loved Leonard Cohen, Mick Jagger. I loved Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys. Even today, I love Van McCann from Catfish and the Bottlemen and Matt Healy from The 1975.
There's something about live players that you cannot get with machines: With live musicians, you can strike a groove, you can feed off each other... And, even though somebody might make a slight mistake, it's all real!
I have always been a person who is concerned with the dignity of jazz music and the way jazz musicians have been treated and are treated, and the fact that the music has not been given the kind of due that it deserves.
Musicians are there in front of you, and the spectators sense their tension, which is not the case when you're listening to a record. Your attention is more relaxed. The emotional aspect is more important in live music.
It's an endless proving of myself, that I really am a musician, that I have something to offer in the room. That women can be musicians, women can be rock stars, women can be more than an objectified idea of a pop star.
A lot of musicians talk about how they were into music from the start; they always wanted to be musicians. It wasn't like that for me. I didn't think of it as a job or a career - it was just something that was constant.
Classical musicians do this all the time. They want perfection. So they piece things together. Eight bars of this and six bars of that. Glenn Gould said that with a recording he wanted to make perfect versions of pieces.
My big brother Ryan was funny and unfailingly kind. He was one of the most talented musicians you might encounte, and had a prodigious ability to pick up any instrument and play it by ear within the span of a single day.
The studio is really fun because I don't make it into the studio unless I've got something I really like. I love working with different musicians in the studio; that's a real joy, working with someone for the first time.
When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.
I think all musicians have at one time or another experienced one physical problem or another. I have had tendinitis a couple of times, so I try to be really careful. It takes patience and persistence to overcome injury.
I remember once, we got an interview, and he said, 'Dad, these people are writing about me like I'm an adult. Don't they know I'm a kid?' I have never tried to encourage him to get a music image like other musicians have.
I used to go to Bourbon Street when I was a kid and there would be club after club after club of people who were around when the music started. I mean these are legendary, maybe not so well known, but legendary musicians.