I sought my father in the world of the black musician, because it contained wisdom, experience, sadness and loneliness. I was not ever interested in the music of boys. From my youngest years, I was interested in the music of men.
I’m a producer for fun. I’m not a professional schooled musician or anything.
I like to read, especially nonfiction. I love learning, so I study languages, cook, learn basic HTML, and enjoy other activities that stimulate communication and the dark recesses of my musician’s brain.
I’ve always had a passion for music, but I never saw me as a musician for a living. I never thought that I could make a living. It never dawned on me.
I feel really privileged that I’ve been able to be an activist and a musician for over 20 years now, and I’ve always been able to say whatever I want. I think that’s something we Americans really take for granted, but it’s a big deal, and it’s not something most people in the world are able to do.
My wife is a painter, musician, and fiber artist. We married in 1993, and as she worked, I found that my reading about art was helping me understand what she was doing, just as seeing her work gave me a language with which to speak of art.
I started out as a singer and a musician, and I was taught that your job is just to get out of the way of Brahms or Arthur Miller or Shakespeare and convey the brilliance that they created.
I’m very unstable; there’s no stability in a musician’s life at all. You live on a bus or on the road hand to mouth and you don’t know where your money’s coming from.
People unfortunately think that if you progress as a musician you are wimpy. I don’t get that.
If I get an idea for a song, I have a melody for it. I’m a musician first. I’m not limited by the fretboard.
That said, everything’s important, and every musician who plays on the record is an integral part of it.
If a musician is making a mediocre, self-indulgent body of work, they have to know that, for the most part, people aren’t going to be interested.
I grew up in a very musical family, my father was a musician and a big band leader and made records.
When you act, you’ve got to be like a poet or a musician. It’s not about evidence before court. It’s not a forensic subject. It’s poetry; it’s a completely different place.
When Pandora doesn’t pay, and bars don’t pay, and weddings don’t pay, and nobody buys CDs or shirts or concert tickets or lessons, then the musician can’t make a living making music.
Christina Aguilera is an incredible musician and singer.
I don’t have any desire to do something that sounds explicitly rock. Like, I don’t have a burning need to be a rock musician. I feel like I’ve taken that as far as I can take it, for me.
A good film demands its own score, and if you are a musician, your conscience will never allow you to do something mediocre for a good film.
I’m always writing and learning. It’s about growth. So I’m growing as a musician, as a guitarist.
I think that the stigmas against model-actresses – and even just, like, entertainer, celebrity chef, and musician – those kinds of walls have been broken down, and you can do multiple things. So while I can, I don’t see why I would stop.
I identify more as a musician than as a singer, because I play piano and percussion, and I engineer and produce everything that I do.
I was a student at Kent State University in May of 1970. I was also a musician in a regionally popular band called the James Gang. I was still going to class and stuff, but I was in and out because we were playing a lot.
Feed the musician, and he’s out of tune.
I came out to L.A. in ’78 to be a musician. I didn’t get into comedy until the mid-Eighties.
When one has been touched by the stellar power and ethereal playing of a sublime musician, one is lifted, if only briefly, to a place beyond the realm of the temporal.
When the Negro musician or dancer swings the blues, he is fulfilling the same fundamental existential requirement that determines the mission of the poet, the priest and the medicine man.
It’s really nice to be able to do what I’m doing without having to compromise with another musician.
Actually, I wanted to be a musician, either a guitarist or a drummer. I guess my dreams were in the entertainment industry, and I landed somewhere along there.
Bill Justis was a saxophone player, good musician, arranger, and friend of mine who had a big hit called ‘Raunchy.’
I’m a musician because I love it and it’s supposed to be fun.
If you date a musician, you’re never, ever really gonna be first either. You’re gonna be right behind the music and maybe right close.
I have a lot of successful musician pals, and as I get older, I find that I’m lucky to be a writer. I have great anonymity compared to musicians who sell the same number of records as I do books.
As a musician, I know that it’ll take time for me to get to the ranks of an established artiste. Nevertheless, I’m very happy that people are appreciating my music.
I really practiced hard and got to a certain level of technical proficiency. I overcame some of my limitations. I was a hard-working, dedicated bassoonist, but I have to say I’m not a natural musician.
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
As a musician, I look for certain things that stimulate me. And what I look for is something that’s an evolution on a particular genre that I never heard before.
As a touring musician over the last 15 years, before streaming and iPods, you had to listen to terrestrial radio wherever you were. That’s always been my way of connecting to a location. Turn on the radio, search through the dial.
If we were all determined to play the first violin we should never have an ensemble. therefore, respect every musician in his proper place.
The problem was the journalists who also did not understand much of my music, but they wrote about it. I think you fell into the usual trap laid out by parts of the press and other writers: that the poor musician has always to fight the evil companies and managers.
So I’ve tried to be this very eccentric character, and that works very well if you want to be a painter which I did once upon a time, if you want to be a musician which I did once upon a time. But if you want to make movies and you want to make challenging movies, you’ve got to be the sanest person in the room.
My father’s nephew was the blues musician, Lowell Fulson. Every time he came around, he had a pretty car, a beautiful woman and a slick sharkskin suit. Believe it or not, that’s how I decided I wanted to get into music.
What motivates me is just to do a really, really good job at something. If I were a better musician, I probably would’ve ended up as one.
Interestingly, I matured as a musician and as an artist before I matured as a man. What I mean by that is, I was ready to be completely vulnerable and honest with myself and unapologetic when it comes to how I express myself in my medium. But I wasn’t as secure in doing that when it came to just being myself.
In my life, my parents wanted me to be a musician, I was supposed to go to Vienna to study piano. But this train wanted to go in another direction.
Musicians from the beginning of time have been there to express the mood and the musical feelings in the air for whatever’s going on in that particular culture. It’s the greatest joy as a musician to be able to translate that, be part of something and watch the scenery around you.
I think that there are a lot of things that come along with being a musician, but I don’t want to whine about them. I don’t want to complain about my job.
I hope to be a producer, a musician, a painter, a photographer – I’m going to push myself to do as many things as I can and see where it goes.
I have musician friends who play too much golf, and they’re not as good at music anymore.
In L.A. everyone is an actor. In Texas, everyone’s a musician.
You can’t stay the same. If you’re a musician and a singer, you have to change, that’s the way it works.
I’m not saying I’m the bee’s knees. But I am a legitimate musician.
Finding a good bus driver can be as important as finding a good musician.
As a musician, I hear the harmonic value of everything – I just enjoy music.
When I’m doing just music all the time, it can get really overwhelming. It’s always challenging to switch it up a bit. And just because you’re a musician, it doesn’t mean that music is your only creative outlet.
Put you energy into music. If it fails you, you can become an accountant or a dentist. And then if you become a dentist or an accountant, it’s too late to become a musician afterwards.
Here’s the thing about Red Sox fans, or actually just fans from that region, in general: they appreciate the effort. And if you mail it in or if you give 80 percent, even with a win, they’ll let you know that’s not how you do it. They want – if it’s comedian, if it’s a musician, bring us your best show.
I’ve seen myself do stuff on stage that was pretty amazing. I think that would be true for any athlete. Any top athlete will see something that they are very proud of. All my injuries will attest to the fact that besides being a musician, it comes down to being an athlete.
I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading.
