You can be addicted to misery the same way as you can be addicted to drugs.
I'd be very suspicious of anybody that seems to have to move to the next level of expression. I distrust that: now I'm writing a book, now I'm being an actor. It should be a natural thing. I think it's a natural thing for you to act. But I think that people that feel that, because they've written one maybe quite beautiful love song that equips them to play Romeo, is probably misguided.
When you're working with the same band you kind of know their style inside out, and even when you've been working for seven years with the same people, suddenly they'll do something you didn't even think they were capable of.
When you work with new people, I think that it throws all of the matters into relief, because you have to explain yourself every time. It's like crossing a new border. They want to see your documents.
I mistrust these people in music industry who can be everybody. This is where technology dictates to them. I mistrust that, that in somehow the chips capture the soul of a player, that's patent nonsense.
Sometimes I write notes that I have difficulty singing. And you start talking yourself out of the bold melody and start wanting to arrange it in another key or something. Maybe I just never learned my harmony part, because what everybody says sounds odd to them sounds perfectly natural to me.
Anything that has to travel all the way down from your cerebellum to your fingertips, there's a lot of things that can happen on the journey. Sometimes I'll listen to records, my own stuff, and I think god, the original idea for this was so much better than the mutation that we arrived at.
Some people can't physically hear things. A kid that listens to Metallica or something can't hear that, because he's filled himself up with this stuff, he physically can't hear a banjo or a harp or something.
I've never had any real concern about posterity. I hope some people will be sorry when I'm not here, but I'm not playing for that.
I really thought twice about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when that came in. I always was of a mind that it's an inherently stupid idea to put something like that in a glass case.
I'm drawing from two generations back how to think about music, how to think about why you travel to make music, what the possible pitfalls of that are for the way your life is structured. The good and bad of all of it get into the mix of what's created, what you're creating.
Certain songs have been written years apart, but they have a natural continuity to my mind.
It's not crazy to want to have certain songs be developed harmonically and still want to make noise with the guitar. And you can have both.
There are a lot of things that you can like at a distance without spending a huge amount of time pondering. It's not so complicated.
You must hold on to the sort of finger-painting aspect of music. That's something I learned, particularly from listening to Neil Young. Tom Waits is another one, because Tom's music is incredibly sophisticated and beautifully arranged, but he's using a toolbox that's unlike anybody else's.
My dad had a steady job with a really major dance band from '54 till '68, and then quit because he wanted to play different music. He wanted to sing about peace. He believed in these things.
I can write orchestrations, but I can't sight-read music and play at the same time. I don't have enough facility.
My grandfather and my father disagreed about music, not least of all because my dad wanted to improvise. It wasn't just that he wanted to play different music; it was just that he came off the dots.
The theme of exile is attractive to me, because it's sort of like the family business. Not just music, but travel.
People speak with enormous pomposity and arrogance about music.
My dad's father was a White Star Line trumpet player in the '20s. It shaped the way that I think about music. My grandfather was classically trained, military trained. He was an orphan who ended up in the Military School of Music in Kneller Hall.
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