If it weren’t for the Beatles, I would not be a musician.
I think of myself as a jungle musician because of my lack of formal training.
A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It’s an individual-feel thing, you know?
Playing the Beethoven symphonies, for example, is a consummate experience for a musician because Beethoven speaks so directly to who we are as people.
When I auditioned for my high school band the band director was excited because my father was known to be a great musician. When he heard me, he said ‘Are you sure you’re Ellis’s son?’
Being a musician, it’s my job to be real and be true to whoever I am. Hopefully that will inspire other people. I hope it inspires people to be themselves and be comfortable in your own skin.
The real Liberace – and I’ll preface this by saying that I didn’t know the real one – was a man who didn’t come from much. His father left him and his family for another woman. His father was a musician, which I thought was pretty interesting.
Since the music industry cracked and fell apart, gasping for the cash flow it had come to expect, much re-thinking has been the order of the day. It is a fine time to be a musician. Like walking through Sodom and Gomorrah while it is still smoking, on your way to the next gig.
The whole process of this record was an education for me as a musician.
I’m 90% performer, 10% musician. I’ve always said that Gossip are a band I would go see, not a band I would listen to.
My dad’s a photographer, and my sister is a writer and a poet. My little brother is a mandolin player – he’s a bluegrass musician. It’s always been a part of the family.
It’s really hard to make a living as a musician. It’s almost impossible.
There’s something so naked about being on stage as a musician. I think about that even with standup comedy or something – like, ‘This is it, this is what I got.’
A musician’s true talent is only tested through background music.
Well, I started out as a musician, so when I was about 10 years old, I was already in a band.
Music is emotional, and you may catch a musician in a very unemotional mood or you may not be in the same frame of mind as the musician. So a critic will often say a musician is slipping.
I think when a musician loses their inhibition and dives deep into their soul, that’s a prayer. It’s so powerful that you will touch people whether it’s good or bad.
I still want to make Kyra proud of the person I am – father, husband, actor, musician.
My father is a jazz musician, so I grew up hearing jazz. My parents loved it, but I didn’t like it. It went on for too long. Yes, I had certain teachers that really inspired me, like Danny Barker, and John Longo. And I had no idea that I would have any impact on jazz.
I’m a big believer that an actor should be able to pick up any piece of material and act it, the way a good musician can.
I knew that going on ‘One Tree Hill’ was going to be an incredible vehicle for the record. What is amazing about it is that my role on the show is, you know, basically playing a musician, and all the songs she plays are off my record.
The prime goal of an author is the same as a musician, which is to emotionally connect with the reader in some way or another.
When I’m dead, I want to be remembered as a musician of some worth and substance.
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.
My father taught me to read music and play the piano-but not well, even though people have said that I’m a natural musician.
To my wife, I’m not Herbie Hancock the musician. I’m her husband. When I’m talking to a neighbor, I’m a neighbor. When I vote, I’m a citizen.
We had to do a lot of rehearsals to get it so that it was playable. What it did was make you practice. That’s good for any musician to have that kind of pressure. It brings things out of you that might not come out if you don’t have to reach for something all the time.
‘Some Kind Of Monster’ is such a nightmare for any musician to watch because you’re watching a band be honest to each other. Not a good idea, man!
When I was a kid, I would impersonate anything that I would hear. It’s – actually, I attribute that more to why I actually was able to become a musician and a singer.
I sometimes listen to music to get into some place that I need to get. I don’t think it’s because I have a musician as a father that I do this – most actors do.
Bowie is a musician, but he works like a painter. Thom always thought that we should aspire to that.
Having a simple career as a musician who liked music was good enough for me.
It sounds kind of stupid, but I’ve never not wanted to be a musician. It’s been inside me since I was little so I don’t know what else I would do.
It’s funny to find there are still people around who think if a musician has schooling, it automatically makes him a lesser jazz player. But you don’t learn jazz in school.
The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician.
I want to be taken seriously as the type of musician that plays stuff like an electric rake. I mean, how seriously do you take someone like Spike Jones? They take him pretty seriously – a really good musician who made a great contribution in terms of humor, which is part of what I try to do too.
I don’t set out to win awards. I don’t think any musician does, but when you receive an award, it’s an affirmation: it means that people appreciate what you do. Every award I have received is a confirmation of something I have done, and that motivates me to push a little harder.
I became a musician because I love music, and that is what has sustained me; it’s not because I thought it was a great way to make a living. Music saved my life.
Western music is Bach, Handel and Schubert. It’s good music, cleverly done. As a musician, I can see that.
Because of social media, a lot of people think they can be, like, a rapper or a singer or a musician because they can put something on YouTube and it might become a thing because there’s – like – YouTube phenomenons and whatnot, you know? It’s not like they dedicated years to it or anything. It’s annoying.
I think I’m an artistic radical, and I think I’ll be recognized as one. I’m a really good musician and a songwriter, but I think my real legacy will be as a radical.
Andy Rourke and I had been playing together from 14 or 15, and we had a very great musical chemistry. Andy’s just a very respected and unusual musician.
When you live in a small country such as Israel, the dream of any musician is to go abroad.
I have never learned to read or write music so I am not a virtuoso musician like the others you mentioned. I am completely unable to play like them because I never learned classical music, I just developed my own crazy style!
Vintage is my vocabulary… like the notes of a musician.
It’s taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing. I’m not a musician. I never thought of performing in a rock n’ roll band. I was just drawn in. It was like being called to duty – I was called to duty, and I did my duty as best as I could.
I always liken myself to the bearded lady. Because I’m an actress turned musician, a woman doing male-dominated rock & roll… I’m the oddity at the freak show, you know?
My old man was a musician – that’s what he did for a living. And like most fathers, occasionally he’d let me visit where he worked. So I started going to his recording studio, and I really dug it.
I think I turned to writing really just to wake up in the morning and be a musician and to have something to do, and feel like a musician every day even if I wasn’t working.
I really didn’t intend to be a musician when I left Japan.
The greatness of a musician is measured by the degree of fanaticism he brings to his playing.
I want to paint. That is probably going to sound so pretentious coming from someone who’s been a musician.
When I was about 21 and just about to get out of college at NYU, Vietnam was raging, and I was a frustrated musician for a little bit.
Elvis Costello had a brand new bag. He was a musician, but he knew all about the attitude part of it.
I’m quite arty. I didn’t know whether to become an artist or musician but I realised I could paint with music. All my songs have colours.
I never really had male influences in my life. Steady, male influences. And that’s what I wanna be for my family. As a musician, I definitely will attain everything that I set out to. I work very hard. But more important to me is that my family is taken care of.
I worked full time jobs, basically doing manual labor until I could make enough money supporting myself as a musician.
I don’t know what makes a writer’s voice. It’s dozens of things. There are people who write who don’t have it. They’re tone-deaf, even though they’re very fluent. It’s an ability, like anything else, being a doctor or a veterinarian, or a musician.
I was a schooled musician. When I made ‘Blue Velvet’, I told everyone what to do. I was an arranger. I learned music in school I told the band to play this. I told the guitar to do that.
Working as a musician, I have to constantly generate new material, so school keeps me sharp. Reading and writing all the time helps me to be a better songwriter.
