I was a student at Harvard, and that's where I learned about so-called avant-garde music. Jackson Pollock, abstract expressionism and painting were well known at this time.
It's easy to get sidetracked with technology, and that is the danger, but ultimately you have to see what works with the music and what doesn't. In a lot of cases, less is more. In most cases, less is more.
I don't go around, the way many musicians do, with earbuds in my ear listening to my iPod all day and just sticking my head in the music all the time.
As a boy, I'd always had an interest in theater. But the idea at my school was that drama and music were to round out the man. It wasn't what one did for a living. I got over that.
I don't listen to music made by white people. I especially hate anything where a guitar is used. I don't listen to white people and guitars.
We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets - we remember only.
Music can be used against us as much as it can be used for us. Muzak can put a whole nation to sleep, whereas a lullaby is intended to put a child to sleep in a sweet way.
To burn a CDR of music you like to give as a gift to someone you wish to become closer to is a cold, moist-palmed, mouth-breathing bummer.
As a young person, I was on the road playing music, so I was getting new environments shoved in my face whether I wanted them or not.
I think rap music is brought up, gangster rap in particular, as well as video games, every other thing they try to hang the ills of society on as a scapegoat.
If something bothers me, it bothers me for a long time until I find a way to work it out. Music provided me with a means of working things out.
Because it's dance music, you can't really have a lot of changing in there. It's really not for me because there's too much repetition. I like more diversity.
Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.
There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking.
If you really believe music is dangerous, you should let it go in one ear and out the other.
When I lived in the U.K., I recorded a lot of ska and rock-steady styles of Jamaican music. But people there weren't accepting it. So I began using a faster reggae beat.
When I listen back to my music and everyone else that's out there, I'm aware that there's something I can do that the next guy doesn't do.
I didn't get into music to become a blues musician, or a country musician. I'm a singer-songwriter. In my book that means I get to do whatever I want.
I had a big background in listening to classical music and I started trying to compose, like I was playing the guitar but I heard an orchestra in my head.
There's the soundtrack to The French Connection II'I think It's my favorite soundtrack. It hasn't been released. I actually had to go and get the film and just make a recording of it to get the music.
It's what the Pixies always said about music - they were writing songs and just trying not to be boring. That was their main motivation and it worked for them. I remember reading that and thinking that was the way to do it.
