I heard Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, and that was it. I didn't ever want to be anything else. I just started banging away and semi-studied classical music at the Royal Academy of Music but sort of half-heartedly.
Both parents were very encouraging - especially my father. My father thought the sun rose and set with me. Neither one had a musical background or any musical talent. They liked classical music, but neither could carry a tune.
I would like to involve myself in some black music. I would like to do some blues and some gospel music. I want to try stuff from other genres and try to widen my musical base.
I discovered the same thing Gram Parsons did, that soul music and country music are practically identical. Based off of the same chord structures, and the songs are of heartache and loss. The main connection is they both came up in church.
I'll always be an actor first. I grew up doing musical theater, so music and acting, to me, have always gone hand in hand. I'm going to be an actor first because it's my career, but music will always be a part of me.
My solo music - I get up onstage, I improvise and it's my improvisation. When I get up onstage with Fred Frith and Mike Patton, then we're improvising together. Then it's not my music; it's our music.
I like to make music, I like rap music. Even if I'm white, I support that music. If I want to support it or any other white kid wants to support it more power to them.
I'm not interested in stirring anybody up through music. If you're going to stir people up, it has to be a thought process that has nothing to do with music. I see music as having to do with an internal thing. Something that stirs you up is external.
I'm very conscious that I want the dance audience to respond and respect what I'm doing, so I'm always very true to the music and I honour the music in the way I see it - I don't mess around with the music.
I'm very easily distracted unless I have music on. Listening to music while I brainstorm makes me think of scenes that would fit the mood of the music I'm playing.
I think that listening to music or creating music is a spiritual undertaking, so the process of creating music, you know, involves listening. It involves sensitivity, it involves humility, you know, and then also it's something which is higher than w...
I knew I wanted to pursue a career in the theater the minute I graduated from college having not pursued it! So I went back to school and got a degree in music and began working in musical theater.
I don't listen to music, actually. Obviously I go to clubs; I stand in elevators; a lot of my friends are musicians; I hear music all the time. But I don't have my own collection of music.
I'm a big fan of gospel music, and you cannot be a fan of rock and roll, you cannot be a fan of country western music, and you can't really be a fan of jazz without listening to a lot of music that's religious.
Music, Rock and Roll music especially, is such a generational thing. Each generation must have their own music, I had my own in my generation, you have yours, everyone I know has their own generation.
I don't have an iPod. I don't get the whole iPod thing. Who has time to listen to that much music? If I had one, it would probably have Sinatra, Beatles, some '70s music, some '80s music, and that's it.
My parents met in music school and my father was a music professor and conductor. Growing up, we always had classical and contemporary music playing. There was a lot of Mozart and the Beatles.
My parents met in music school, and my father was a music professor and conductor. Growing up, we always had classical and contemporary music playing.
There's consciousness in my music, and my music comes from a conscious place. And when people say that, I certainly take it as a compliment. But my job, in terms of selling my music, is to be universal and to try to get it to everybody.
I think pop music is in such an exciting place right now, and I do kind of credit that to Lorde with 'Royals.' I think that song changed everything in the pop scene. All of the sudden, alternative pop music became pop music.
It had never occurred to me before that music and thinking are so much alike. In fact you could say music is another way of thinking, or maybe thinking is another kind of music.