The office of President is a great one; to every true American it seems the greatest on earth. And to me, as I was engaged in weaving a background of music for the pageantry of it, there came a deeper realization of the effect of that office on the m...
The music I listen to while writing is really scene-specific. It's just a great motivator, a way to put myself in the mood.
I treat the photograph as a work of great complexity in which you can find drama. Add to that a careful composition of landscapes, live photography, the right music and interviews with people, and it becomes a style.
Everything I do has a certain quality, a certain flair, a certain flavor. I like to eat the way I like to dress, the way I listen to music: put it all together, and it's a great party.
Rock stardom and all that stuff like that was never like my main M.O., my main M.O. is musical growth, and if I become a rock star in the process, great!
I was really into Black Sabbath, but heavy guitars can really be very limiting, it's a great frequency and it's great fun to listen to but on the other hand, musically you can do a lot more without it.
When I first started acting, I started in opera and had a great desire to play grand, tragic characters. I got sidetracked in musical theater and ended up doing a lot of comedy.
A great song is a great song, whether it's on vinyl or CD or cassette or reel to reel or mp3. Then again, that might be an overly optimistic view, but I do think that great music will transcend the medium in which it is delivered.
I made all these great musicals with Judy Garland. It was all about me going into a barn and saying: 'Let's put on a show.' That's what me and Judy did.
One of the great virtues, apart from the pleasure of performing these works, is that it's opened up an entirely new, expansive repertoire of American Jewish music.
I believe that great success is possible in any field - from music to mathematics to macro trading.
Not that there weren't great shows, and not that there wasn't plenty of fine music played. It's just that the consistency and the height of where we could take it, with the help of the audience, was less, I felt, in the '90s.
Big productions, to me, are great - like, I love going to Vegas and seeing shows - but I think that sometimes it's distracting, especially when you are there to listen to the music.
The Negroes have little invention, but strong powers of imitation, so that they readily acquire mechanic arts. They have a great talent for music, and all their external senses are remarkably acute.
The great composers I worked with along the way, I always felt they were filmmakers more than composers. They would talk about the story rather than the music.
I created this picture of this character who would play the guitar effortlessly, who had no limitations, performing beautiful music, and he moved around with great acrobatic skills, just capturing the audience and being a great entertainer.
Our world was Northern, black and white, so it was a great thing for my sisters and me to sit down at Christmastime and watch these fabulous MGM musicals. All that color, all those beautiful costumes.
I really want to do a book on the history of the no-wave music scene in New York, how it extended out and formed lots of other things. It was such a great visual culture.
And it's a crime because the great plays of history, going all the way back to the Greeks, are part of everybody's heritage. It's just like in music, Beethoven or Mozart, that's everybody's heritage.
When people compliment my cooking, it's like somebody telling me that they like my music. And it's great to be known for something else.
My advice is if you have to do music, then do it! There's no choice in your heart and your soul - unless you have that kind of great need, desire and determination, it's pretty tough out there!
