I was 16 when I got a scholarship to study classical composition at a conservatory. By that time I had already listened to Scottish folksong with my mother, sung in church choirs, and had sung solo with Benjamin Britten conducting.
When I write music for a film, I’m not writing a solo album, and I’m not writing a personal piece. I’m part of a team of artists. So I think like a filmmaker more than a composer.
Most people don’t really need to hear a six-minute guitar solo that modulates between five keys and time signatures. What they want is a good song.
I didn’t intend to make one solo record, much less two. It’s really a matter of seeing how it goes.
Both Neil and I had done solo projects where we were the boss and I just thought that if he was willing to get into it, it would really be a good experience for him.
I enjoy my work, no matter who I am working with. Even if you give me a solo silent film, I will enjoy it.
It hasn’t always been easy, but you get to a point where you’re not doing the solo stuff with any kind of expectation in terms of commercial or a business outcome, you’re doing it because you believe in this.
I didn’t want to be a solo Westlife – covers and ballads – and the reason I signed with Capitol Records was because they wanted me to write songs myself. It was pretty scary, but they put me in a studio in Nashville with some new songwriters, and the results were pretty good.
If you want to stand with me as a single mom – and I know so many of my friends and colleagues do – please don’t appropriate my burden as a way to validate your own. To suggest that you are single-parenting when you are simply solo for the weekend devalues what real single mothers do.
I was still in school after I dropped my first solo album.
I went to UCLA and studied studio art. I thought I was going to be a gallery painter, photographer, or ceramicist. Then, when I graduated, that didn’t happen immediately. I didn’t suddenly get solo shows in Chelsea, and I realized that is actually kind of difficult to break into.
I discovered that it was a lonely world being a solo artist. Then I started working with another solo artist, Rod Stewart, and he used to tell me how lonely he was!
When I opened my solo practice, I made it a priority to put my patients’ experience first and foremost. This involves making them feel comfortable, both literally and figuratively.
During the whole time in Sonic Youth, I was happy to put my energy into that. It would have been very difficult to do a solo project.
When I first went from a band situation to a solo situation, it was quite an adjustment to make. But after having done it for a number of years, it really feels good out there.
It’s interesting when you’ve been a partner with someone for so long. So now to sing solo and starting all over again I am learning that I am more bodacious than I thought. I don’t know where it’s coming from but I am glad.
I love the idea of stepping out of the band situation into a solo world with no boundaries, no expectations, where nothing is out of bounds.
Miles Davis was a part of my life from 1947 on. I was born in 1941 and I first heard him in 1947 on a 78 rpm. And then I followed his career, starting with his first solo album in 1951. He was an icon and inspiration and a mentor to me.
I don’t believe in a solo role which doesn’t have any meaning.
There’s something about ‘Free Solo’ that I look at the craft around it, and I’m really proud.
After I came out of surgery – I was in the hospital for five weeks – I found that I gravitated toward very gentle sounds: chant music, solo bamboo flute sounds, a laid-back record of my own called ‘Inside.’ And the music became a very real part of my recovery process.
Doing the stereotypical solo bores me.
I enjoy singing but I lack the proper training to make it as a solo artist. Instead, I feel I’ve found my niche with acting.
One of the beauties about going solo was being able to start from scratch and say, ‘What do I really want? What kind of band do I really want? What kind of live show do I really want to stage?’ Without any of the baggage of being something with history.
I fought doing dance music as a solo artist for a long time. I always thought there was a ceiling with it.
The first thing you realise very quickly when you decide to do an acoustic version of an electric song is your solo either becomes either very truncated, very different, or non-existent, because even if you play a clean solo, it’s different with the Kryptonite… with the acoustic.
I heard some stuff recently from Julian Casablancas, and his solo stuff is amazing. If I could write with anyone, it would be him.
Strangely enough, I wasn’t into fast guitarists. I preferred Peter Green’s subtle touch. I saw him with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers at the Marquee Club in London and was very impressed. He was the only guitarist I’ve ever seen to turn the volume control on his guitar down during a solo.
It’s very hard to find a pianist that’s willing to play the so-called accompanist role on part of the program and yet be capable of being a great solo pianist that you would want for the big sonatas.
I think it took me until – my twenties were really a time of exploration and experimentation with different groups and different types of music. Then I kind of developed the sound, which first appeared, I guess, on my first solo album ‘Englaborn,’ which came out in 2001.
I knew I didn’t want to make a country record just because that’s not really what I would have ever made as a solo artist.
When I formed the band and created the Wildabouts with my friends, we decided we wanted to make a band-sounding album, a rock-sounding album. I made two solo albums before that were more experimental albums, and I think that they didn’t really resonate with my fan base because they were too out-there, too artsy.
Traveling solo makes you more responsible.
When I recorded my solo album, ‘Keep It Hid,’ in 2008, I’d gotten more interested in songwriting, inspired by reading Charles Bukowski and connecting with unfancy, interesting language.
When I was recording my first solo album ‘Imaginaryland,’ I was listening to a lot of movie scores.
I’m more akin to things like Sigur Ros, Mogwai, possibly. But when I’m making solo electronic music, techno stuff is just the most exciting form of rhythm.
The thing for me is I never had this burning desire to do a solo record my whole life.
I’ve always looked on myself as one of a band and never sought a solo career.
For me, if we’re going to have a guitar solo, it needs to be over the top.
When Marvel approached me about possibly bringing back a She-Hulk solo series, a few touchstones for a take immediately popped into my head – make her an attorney. Make her charming and fun, not weighed down by the various things life will throw at her. Give her a vibrant social life.
It’s really easy to hide in metaphor or hide in a solo or instrumentation, but when you’re saying explicitly this is how I feel it’s a bit different – it makes you a more vulnerable person.
I always wanted to solo at the church and they didn’t ever give it to me. But eventually they did and I froze. But then I killed it.
‘Free Solo’ has got nothing to do with politics, so to speak, but why are audiences responding to it in the degree that they did? I think it’s because we give people an opportunity to see someone. Also, he’s able to connect when you don’t think he could connect. It’s a respite.
Woke Up Today’ is a number of different sections compounded together. There’s the melodica solo section which is three divisions; there’s the really funky thing in eleven before that, there’s the chorus and verse and there’s the ending which slows down and speeds up.
I always wanted Han Solo’s confidence and swagger. My personality is way more C-3PO, but Han was always who I wanted to be.
Yes, I will probably concentrate on solo roles, but I would not say no to multi-starrers if they come from good directors and with a good script. I would allow myself the freedom to do it.
A lot of research went into ‘Succession.’ I wrote the pilot solo, so there was a good deal of my own research and life experience in there.
The whole impetus behind going solo was an artistic inspiration in the sense that, obviously, success is fantastic. But as one becomes successful and gets branded with a certain sound, if the brand starts to become more of the focus than the evolution of the art, then that’s putting the cart before the horse.
My solo music – I get up onstage, I improvise and it’s my improvisation. When I get up onstage with Fred Frith and Mike Patton, then we’re improvising together. Then it’s not my music; it’s our music.
I think the musicians I play with solo do a certain thing that the musicians we play with with the Indigo Girls don’t do. It’s just a different thing. And it sort of steers my writing in some ways.
Back when I was growing up, gangs wasn’t heavy. We was solo thugging. When we got money on our own, the hood got money. It wasn’t about colors or a certain name when I was growing up. We wasn’t doing no gangs. But as the generations change, things change.
If I would have ever dreamed that I wouldn’t be in Van Halen anymore and was going to have resume my solo career again, I would have never contributed anything towards my own greatest hits package.
