Latest Petra Haden Quotes from Interviews

• It's my favorite movie score and because I had such a crush on Christopher Reeve. The music made me love him even more. You know when you hear music in a movie and it makes you fall in love with the characters? That's what happened.

  Petra Haden

  Crush, Falling In Love, Character

  Source: therumpus.net

• Our dad played us a lot of old country songs by The Carter Family and he would sing along to it. I loved listening to him sing.

  Petra Haden

  Country, Song, Dad

  Source: therumpus.net

• I've already done two cover albums. I don't know, maybe it wouldn't be a good idea to do another, but I just did the Led Zeppelin song for fun, and I thought I could do it kind of quick since songs that I love a lot I can do fast.

  Petra Haden

  Song, Fun, Ideas

  Source: therumpus.net

• Harmony has always come very natural to us because we started singing harmony at an early age. We heard a lot of different music growing up.

  Petra Haden

  Growing Up, Singing, Age

  Source: therumpus.net

• People want to hear clean sounds; they don't want to hear coughing in the background, pages turning.

  Petra Haden

  Pages Turning, People, Sound

  Source: therumpus.net

• My grandparents on my mom's side played in a mandolin orchestra. So when I hear mandolins, I automatically think of them.

  Petra Haden

  Mom, Thinking, Grandparent

  Source: therumpus.net

• Everyone knows about The Who, but I didn't. I knew the popular songs like "I Can See For Miles." So that was the first song I worked on because it was the catchiest and easiest.

  Petra Haden

  Song, Firsts, Miles

  Source: therumpus.net

• I put out Imaginaryland, I heard a lot of, "Oh she's copying Laurie Anderson," and I was like, wait... but I don't know her music! Maybe - didn't she have a song called "Superman"?

  Petra Haden

  Song, Waiting, Copying

  Source: therumpus.net

• I played violin from when I was about eight to thirteen, so I could read a little bit, but if you put a piece of music in front of me now, I would probably know the notes, but not the timing, how they're supposed to be played, and I just don't know how to read chords. If I'd stuck with it, I'd probably have more jobs.

  Petra Haden

  Jobs, Eight, Pieces

  Source: therumpus.net

• My forte is playing along and singing along to music I love. I mean, who knows, maybe I could develop that knack or develop that ability to write, and I do actually co-write with people and friends, which is fun, too, because then I don't have to worry about writing lyrics, because for me writing lyrics is impossible.

  Petra Haden

  Fun, Writing, Mean

  Source: therumpus.net

• I didn't know who Meredith Monk was, and I knew about Laurie Anderson but I didn't know her music that well.

  Petra Haden

  Monk, Wells, Knows

  Source: therumpus.net

• You have to be a poet to know how to write a song with lyrics.

  Petra Haden

  Song, Writing, Poet

  Source: therumpus.net

• I didn't know how write a song, (verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, bridge, verse), etc., and I didn't know how to write lyrics, so that's when I thought, well, I don't have to write a song with all those verses and choruses or lyrics. I can just sing everything the way I want to. So I sang all the instruments with my voice and just went with it.

  Petra Haden

  Song, Writing, Bridges

  Source: therumpus.net

• People are born with the knack to write poems and songs. I'm not a poet at all.

  Petra Haden

  Song, Writing, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• When we were on breaks from recording and touring, I was kind of moping around, like not knowing what to do. It was hard to adjust back to normal life after being so busy.

  Petra Haden

  Knowing, Normal, Kind

  Source: therumpus.net

• I thought about what I wanted to do besides playing violin and singing backup in a band. Don't get me wrong, playing and singing in That Dog was really fun, but I wanted to work on other musical projects and sing more. So I started a vocal project, i.e. Imaginaryland.

  Petra Haden

  Dog, Fun, Musical

  Source: therumpus.net

• I never punched in anything when I recorded Imaginaryland. Where the title came from is a whole other story.

  Petra Haden

  Titles, Stories, Whole

  Source: therumpus.net

• Eventually I had so many little melodies and ideas that, you know, that they were all songs to me and I threw in a few cover songs like Enya's "Watermark," Bach, and my dad's song, "Song for the Whales."

  Petra Haden

  Song, Dad, Whales

  Source: therumpus.net

• I love the Bach Prelude No. 2 in C Minor and had that stuck in my head: why don't I put this on Imaginaryland? So I brought it to my friend Tom Grimley who recorded That Dog's first record. I played him all my a cappella pieces, and he said, "P, you should really make a record, it would be great! You can record it at my studio and I'll put it out!"

  Petra Haden

  Dog, Would Be, Pieces

  Source: therumpus.net

• I just recorded in studios, you know, people pressed the buttons for me. So I just started recording the bass lines and guitar parts with my voice, covering classical pieces, or just making up melodies so I could learn how to use it.

  Petra Haden

  Guitar, Voice, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• The first song I wrote was "Look Both Ways Before You Cross" from Imaginaryland. I started the song by singing a bass line, "hoo hoo hoo hoo."

  Petra Haden

  Song, Singing, Looks

  Source: therumpus.net

• I got a new 4-track cassette recorder a year or so after high school. For a while I would just stare at it thinking, how am I going to do this if I don't play guitar or keyboards? How am I going to write and record a song if I don't know how to play any instruments? I mean, I played the violin, but I didn't know anything about how to work a 4-track.

  Petra Haden

  Song, Writing, School

  Source: therumpus.net

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