Even though I’m known as a pop musician, I have a seriousness about what I do.
It is important for the musician to learn as much about the composer as possible and to study the music he has written. Then, even a short piece by Brahms or Chopin can be played with much more understanding.
The real amazing thing about all of this is I think I’ve maintained the mentality of a musician throughout it all, which I’m proudest of. And I’m still playing on people’s records and singing on people’s records.
I have never imagined doing anything other than football, but now, thinking about it coldly, if I hadn’t been a footballer, I would have been a musician.
I got by as a musician since day one. I don’t live beyond my means. I have real cheap tastes.
If a professional musician in a symphony orchestra is playing Beethoven. But this particular orchestra have played this particular chestnut so many times, they can play it in their sleep. Does the genius remain present in the music or not?
You won’t see me at a microphone singing and tapping my foot. I spend a lot of money on sets, costumes and sound. I believe people deserve a show. I’m a singer, musician, dancer. I work hard, and I’m soaking wet when I come off.
A musician can get lost to what he is in the session busines as it was.
In most of the stuff that I’ve done over the years as a sideman, I wasn’t really a session musician, because to me, a session musician is a guy who makes his living in the studio, and I never really did that.
Being a musician since I was a teen, Guitar Center is the staple. You need anything to create, it’s there. You need a Guitar Center. You gotta give it homage. It’s a tool shed, and without the tool shed, it’s hard to create.
I wanted to be a musician. I wanted to be a superstar. I wanted to be on stage. I wanted to perform. I wanted to be in movies. But as you grow up, those dreams kind of fade away, and you’re hit with reality, and you’re like, ‘Oh, not everyone can be Lil’ Bow Wow?’ Fine.
I did recording sessions as a musician as well as a background vocalist and enjoyed every minute of it. I remember singing harmony with Waylon Jennings on a few songs that were hits. Chet Atkins always put me up so high that I strained to hit every note. It was a lot of fun.
I don’t think I’ve ever been true to jazz. There’s always a kind of jazz element to what I do. There are a very few genres that I haven’t tried out, really, in what I’ve been doing. As a jazz musician, you can kind of mess about with things with a certain level of musicianship, which helps.
Every time we give a musician the advice to give away the music and sell the T-shirt, we’re saying, ‘Don’t make your living in this more elevated way. Instead, reverse this social progress, and choose a more physical way to make a living.’ We’re sending them to peasanthood, very much like the Maoists have.
Career had a lot to do with 80 percent of my breakups. It’s very tough to date a struggling musician. The idea of it is enticing and fun and mysterious. But the reality is long hours and hard work. I have a lot of respect for the women I’ve dated.
Strangely enough, through all those school years I decided at 13 or 14 I was going to be a musician and so school was just something to get out of the way, a waste of time and not to bother with it.
To me, if you’re a musician, then you’re interested in music, and if you’re interested in music, then you should listen to a lot of different types.
Around the world, I am known as a great musician. But in America, I am known as the cuchi-cuchi girl. That’s okay because cuchi-cuchi has taken me all the way to the bank.
I’m very motivated by the occasional creative payoff that comes when something goes really well, be it a song, a recording or performance. The payoff is enormous – when you get it. Most of the time, though, I’m filled with self-loathing and general frustration at the limitations I have as a musician.
Today a record producer is even more involved and is often the production’s sole musician, one person playing all the instruments one-by-one.
Being jazz-trained, things happen spontaneously. Even though it’s funk rock, we still have the instincts of a jazz musician.
When you’re on stage, the audience becomes your other half. It’s the ultimate high you can reach as a musician – an incredible feeling. And no matter where I am it’s still the same; there’s a reason we call music the universal language.
‘Musician’ is not a very respected title. I’m not a musician.
That’s what I tell my students at California Institute of the Arts where I taught for 27 years. I taught them if you strive to be a good person, maybe you might become a great jazz musician.
I came to L.A. in 1970, and my desire and my training was to be a studio musician, which I had read about in my senior year in high school.
But when I was a teenager, the idea of spending the rest of my life in a factory was real depressing. So the idea that I could become a musician opened up some possibilities I didn’t see otherwise.
I’m a musician at heart, I know I’m not really a singer. I couldn’t compete with real singers. But I sing because the public buys it.
I never really thought about becoming a professional musician.
I used to believe that if I could do certain things – write a book or be a successful musician – that I’d be transformed into a happy person, but it doesn’t work that way.
Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.
I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it’s not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That’s how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be a musician.
You kind of hope as a musician that you get some recognition for what you do, and when you do, it’s nice. It’s a really good feeling.
I started as a musician. I play the saxophone, but from the age of 17, I realised that it’s very hard to make a living as a jazz musician in Australia. So I went for an audition and got an acting job and, fortunately, I completely fell in love with that.
My husband, Gabriele, is a musician, and I love music, so you can bet it’s a really important part of our home entertaining repertoire, even if it means Gabriele making a really good playlist for a dinner party.
If you’re a musician, you’re a musician; you don’t ever get that out of your bones.
I did write a lot of TV themes – I wrote about 45 of them, and a couple of which are still reference and popular today, like ‘Diff’rent Strokes’ and ‘Facts of Life.’ But I was a limited musician.
There’s no continuity in videos… you can jump around all over the place. In features, you can’t throw in a close-up of a musician stomping on a guitar – you have to film a scene.
My secret dream has always been to be a jazz musician. I tried the saxophone for a year or two when I was younger, but unfortunately I had to face the fact that I was not really talented!
I learned that the only way you are going to get anywhere in life is to work hard at it. Whether you’re a musician, a writer, an athlete or a businessman, there is no getting around it. If you do, you’ll win – if you don’t, you won’t.
The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.
Everybody has ideas. The vital question is, what do you do with them? My rock musician sons shape their ideas into music. My sister takes her ideas and fashions them into poems. My brother uses his ideas to help him understand science. I take my ideas and turn them into stories.
I like having my hair and face done, but I’m not going to lose weight because someone tells me to. I make music to be a musician not to be on the cover of Playboy.
I love the power of the musician who composes and performs. I envy their ability to put a nugget of truth in three minutes of sweat and emotional outpouring, colored entirely from their thoughts.
To do anything with someone like Bono or someone would be like, you know, a milestone, I think, as a musician.
My best business decision was to be independent as a musician and artist. My worst was compromising on certain aspects of a deal for the sake of other members of my group when I shouldn’t have, because I was right in the end.
I don’t think I’m a country artist, really. I’m a country person, but I don’t think I’m necessarily a country singer or musician.
And you realise you’re doing a public service in making people happy – as a musician you can give people something a doctor, a lawyer, a politician cannot give them that. It’s not scientific. It’s spiritual – a good feeling. And although you don’t know them personally, the audience are like your friends.
I’m an untrained musician. Untrained musicians don’t really have any music theory, they don’t have a lot of rules. We break the rules, but it’s mostly because we don’t know what the rules are. It’s easy for us to go to certain places, so I’m not surprised that a lot of people were amused by my songwriting style.
I always knew I wanted to be a musician, and I always knew I wanted to write, ’cause the people I was listening to all wrote. I never thought it was an option to sing anyone else’s songs.
At a certain point, I became a kind of musician that has tunnel vision about jazz. I only listened to jazz and classical music.
