Top 484 Musicians Quotes

I live in Topanga Canyon, which is like a faux-rustic enclave in Los Angeles. I love the sounds of all the critters outside – the frogs, owls, crickets, and birds. Some of the birds around here are pretty accomplished musicians. You can learn a lot from them.

If I wasn’t a model, I would never have been around interesting musicians, even had the financial capabilities to say, ‘I don’t have to work right now. I can sit and make my record.’

I met Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I’m not really star struck by actors, but musicians, that’s when I get star struck. Chad Smith is my number one drum influence, so that was a real mind-blow. I spoke to him – proper English, thank God!

For me, let’s keep jazz as folk music. Let’s not make jazz classical music. Let’s keep it as street music, as people’s everyday-life music. Let’s see jazz musicians continue to use the materials, the tools, the spirit of the actual time that they’re living in, as what they build their lives as musicians around.

Western record companies haven’t always dealt with African musicians in the best way. Giving them a lot of money and telling them they’re going to be bigger than Phil Collins is the wrong way to do it!

It has always seemed slightly uncomfortable, the idea of politicised musicians. Very few of them are clever enough to do it; if they’re good at the political side, the music side suffers, and vice versa.

It’s a radical time for musicians, a really revolutionary time, and I believe revolutions like Napster are a lot more fun than cash, which by the way we don’t have at major labels anyway, so we might as well get with it and get in the game.

They taught us because they wanted to pass the knowledge on and educate young musicians. It was not because they had to teach because they failed as musicians. There is a huge difference in the reasons why someone is teaching and what they can offer and what they cannot offer.

I’ve got lots of friends who are musicians, so if they ask me to do things, I’ll go and do it for a laugh. I don’t want to be a pop star or anything like that.

France has always had a special place for Apple. This is the best place to discover and chat with all musicians, graphic designers, designers, or photographers who use our products. There is such creative energy.

I can’t even imagine how it must be to be a solo artist playing with session musicians.

Too many young musicians today want to win polls before they learn their instruments.

We all know the record biz don’t pay. All musicians have day jobs – no matter how big they are.

The fact that I’m not a good musician – I throw it around, tell people that – it doesn’t matter that much. It only matters to me, because I idolized good musicians. I absolutely worshiped them.

Reps once took chances on art, History’s most treasured musicians were believed in and cultivated to reach their potential. Today, it would be difficult for those musicians to get deals.

I tried to give my career a shot from Barranquilla, but the musicians would never show up. It was just not taken seriously.

Once I took a bus from my home in Maryland to Philadelphia to live on the streets with some musicians for a few weeks, and then my parents sent me to boarding school at Andover to shape me up.

I don’t have actors as friends. There’s no actor who’s my 3 A.M. friend. There are a couple of musicians whom I can call friends, and I have a close knit group of friends whom I feel comfortable with.

When I listen to music, there’s usually some aspect of that music that I like, and that’s what I take and try to bring into my own music. Bringing in other musicians to collaborate with is a good way for me to test out new ways or make music that I might have not discovered on my own.

I have lots of friends who are musicians and it is such a huge victory to survive in music, period – but if you get sick or injured and don’t have the kind of coverage we get in Canada, you are doomed.

It would have been more obvious to go into film, based on the generation before me, but the generation before them were all composers or classical musicians.

When I hear music that parents hate, or older musicians hate, I know that’s the new music. When I hear older people saying, ‘I hate Rap or Techno’ I rush to it.

Writing songs with Brian and performing them with Al Jardine, Dennis Wilson, Carl Wilson, David Marks, Bruce Johnston and many other brilliant musicians over the years is my legacy, and something of which I am very proud and protective.

Serious musicians are finding it harder and harder to have a voice in the world of music these days.

Musicians of any era – whether it be The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Rage Against the Machine, or, of course, Madonna – will inspire fashion. And we, in turn, will inspire them.

I have learned a lot from jazz. I compare good acting to jazz music. The more you study and prepare as an actor, the more equipped you are to live in the moment. Just like the gifted musicians in my dad’s quartet, it takes a courageous actor to be free.

I never gave up on that idea, you know, that jazz musicians have the same opportunity as everybody else and that it’s what you put on that record that makes the difference whether you sell it or not or are able to get it into people’s households.

I guess I’ve never been introduced properly to Pink Floyd. I know they’re great, don’t get me wrong. Excellent, excellent musicians; great band; awesome harmony; great song writers; I just don’t know anything besides, I guess, the popular songs on the radio.

Intense study with Indian musicians such as Gaurav Majumdar and Zakir Hussain has inspired me to rethink my view of instrumental sound.

Musicians have always adopted Macs.

Coltrane would do what you’d get a Roland Pro Tools module to do but with a group of jazz musicians.

On Eye of the Zombie, I had so-called studio musicians.

I would advise dancers, musicians and others in the entertainment industry to take up yoga, as it clears the mind and creates a sense of balance and stillness which is important for any performing artist.

Whatever I think, talk and do is because of the influence of God. My music is a tribute to Him. Whenever I compose any music, I try to reach God. I would advice all the budding musicians to do the same and see the difference. Thanks to Him, I am what i am today.

‘Tis the common disease of all your musicians that they know no mean, to be entreated, either to begin or end.

Whitney Houston and Ella Fitzgerald are my musical mothers. I learned everything I know about true R&B, pop and jazz singing from these stunning performers and unparalleled musicians.

The musicians are really on board, they’re doing a great job together. There is some kind of a good chemistry, I would say affectionate chemistry and it’s a huge promise of success.

I’m no ethnomusicologist. There is a connection between the five-note scale used both in traditional Chinese music and the blues, but I don’t really understand it. All I know is, whenever I play with Chinese musicians, we seem to belong to the same musical gene pool.

I love music and musicians. And seeing great artists dropped from labels was really frustrating and sad to me.

Meeting actors and TV personalities is one thing, but I just feel like meeting musicians is the coolest.

There’s a different feeling when you’ve played with musicians for 30 years. A lot of stuff doesn’t even need to be said, especially onstage. We just read each other so well.

The public is usually slow to catch on to new things, and it’s important that musicians stick to their guns and not look for that instant gratification.

From chain gangs to folk songs to intelligent soul, America has created musicians dedicated to truth, justice, and a better American Way.

Everything I do is collaborative. It’s just my way. I’m really very interested in how the other musicians perceive the song.

Everyone in my family is an artist in some capacity whether they’re musicians, painters, or sculptors, so it’s in their blood.

We’re not getting paid. We have these great musicians with us and it gives us a real charge. And the audience gives us a charge, because they keep it interesting all the time.

I’ve always wanted to make music like people write plays, so I was inspired by writers as much as musicians.

Broadcast radio was entering its own golden age during the Depression, with live programming on stations all through the day. Local stations needed singers, musicians, announcers, and whipcord personalities, along with Christian clergy to give prayers and pundits to speak on world affairs.

Why can’t jazz musicians just leave a melody alone?

All of these people kept on being professional musicians and composers in the strictest sense.

I wish I played guitar so I could start a band with great musicians.

Historically, musicians know what it is like to be outside the norm – walking the high wire without a safety net. Our experience is not so different from those who march to the beat of different drummers.

It astonished me in the early Nineties to suddenly have musicians admit that they had been inspired and influenced by us. That meant a lot at that time. But of course, being human, the… disrespect isn’t even strong enough a word, is it? The opprobrium was painful. Being popular and hated is not satisfying.