Musical Quotes

If an American audience is given a serious musical theater piece that is well produced, dramatically gripping and wonderfully acted, they'll respond to it.

After 'The Blues Brothers,' I wanted to do a good musical number with real dancers and shoot it correctly.

A lot of people ask me why I don't expand and explore other musical areas, but I like the plain three- and four-chord rock-and-roll that I call the the semi-blues.

I've held onto little musical sketches that I thought could be useful, and the more time that I spend doing them for each film, then the more I have to draw on.

The world must be filled with unsuccessful musical careers like mine, and it's probably a good thing. We don't need a lot of bad musicians filling the air with unnecessary sounds. Some of the professionals are bad enough.

Any musical person who has never heard a Negro congregation under the spell of religious fervor sing these old songs has missed one of the most thrilling emotions which the human heart may experience.

I come from a background of experimental music which mingled real sounds together with musical sounds.

I'll come in with a string of riffs and direct the musical ideas. But you still need a band and their input to make the ideas come alive. You can't underestimate band chemistry.

The experience awakened 'my tremendous musical ambition, which has never subsided to this day.

I thought my life would seem more interesting with a musical score and a laugh track.

It was only after Pather Panchali had some success at home that I decided to do a second part. But I didn't want to do the same kind of film again, so I made a musical.

No change in musical style will survive unless it is accompanied by a change in clothing style. Rock is to dress up to.

Jazz is a very democratic musical form. It comes out of a communal experience. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.

I had an older brother who was very interested in literature, so I had an early exposure to literature, and and theater. My father sometimes would work in musical comedies.

In contrast, traditional classical music starts from an abstract musical schema. This is then notated and only expressed in concrete sound as a last stage, when it is performed.

I remember Tim telling me that he had an idea for a musical and he said to me that he was hoping that ABBA would be writing the music, which I thought was a pretty wild idea because they were obviously known very much as pop writers.

I really just followed my musical instincts every step of my life.

I really like the old stuff that I cut my musical teeth on, and I loved it when the industry was just like that, without really a genre. Today, country radio's more aimed at a demographic than a genre. It just softens everything.

And the invention of transformations of certain figures has become the most important in musical composition.

We went for the best overall feel on each song. There are no musical overdubs at all. It's a true live record; it's one of the few true live records out there.

One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn't if you knew better.

My training in music and composition then led me to a kind of musical language process in which, for example, the sound of the words I play with has to expose their true meaning against their will so to speak.

Ironically, that was quite a bit of the appeal of Rumours. It's equally interesting on a musical level and as a soap opera.

Woody is so musical in his filmmaking. I've never worked with anyone I've trusted so completely. He won't let you hit a false note.

The problem is that I don't want to add another record to the world that is not necessary to be published, except to make some business. There has to be a musical reason.

I never played a musical instrument growing up but I knew kids who did and took it very seriously.

Piano playing is a dying art. I love the fact that I can be one guy with one instrument evoking an emotional and musical experience.

I think I'm more influenced, just in general, not by blues artists, but more by stuff from Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder. Stevie Wonder is probably my biggest musical influence of all. And Donny Hathaway.

That creates the magic, and that's the wonderment of the musical process and how precious that is.

If I made a musical in the beginning of my career, it would have been crane shots and tracking shots and people coming out of cakes and whatever, but these techniques are something that I've left behind me.