Words matter. These are the best Steve Winwood Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Don’t buy this ‘believe in yourself’ rubbish. Why do they keep telling youngsters that? There’s no point believing in yourself if you don’t know what you’re doing. Once you’ve got a vision of what you want to do, by all means stick to that passionately and doggedly. Believe in your ideas. It’s not quite the same thing.
A band is not a marriage. There are no oaths of allegiance. If you feel your life will be better served by splitting up the group, you’ve got to do it – but of course it does cause problems.
All through the kind of late ’80s and ’90s, every A&R record company man was saying, ‘Now what we want is another record like ‘Back in the High Life.’ And, of course, that’s not the way to make music at all. That’s the tail wagging the dog.
Here we were supposedly changing the world for the better in the Sixties, but as we get 40 years further down the line, we realise that some of those changes such as the drugs probably weren’t all that great or sensible. It was all about social experiments.
One of my problems is I’m not really sure if I slot into rock or not. I’ve always tried to combine world music, folk, jazz, blues and rock, and have done since Traffic.
The percentage you’re paying is too high priced While you’re living beyond all your means And the man in the suit has just bought a new car From the profit he’s made on your dreams.
My goal has always been to make classic records, classic albums. Sometimes the recording process and the era it was recorded in means the production leans in a particular way, but to me they are all part of the same process.
In some respects I’m quite easily led, so I have to make sure I’ve got my own space, and that I feel comfortable in my working environment. It’s very important for me to work with the right collaborators, as I can easily get led into a corner where I’m not comfortable.
Obviously, the Sixties was a time when everyone wanted to experiment, and then everything became very formulated and corporate, so artists tended to get pushed into a kind of pattern. Now, I think that has continued with the emergence of televised talent shows like ‘X Factor.’
I got thrown out of music school for even listening to Fats Domino and Ray Charles. I was asked, ‘What kind of music do you like to listen to?’ and I said, ‘Well, I do like Paul Hindemith and Igor Stravinsky but I also like Fats Domino and Ray Charles,’ and they literally said, ‘Either forget about that or leave.’
Punk was more based on social change than on music, so it didn’t bother me too much. It wasn’t really a musical threat.
Don’t you know by now, luck don’t lead to anything or why you keep on moving.
