I am certain that most composers today would consider today's music to be rich, not to say confusing, in its enormous diversity of styles, technical procedures, and systems of esthetics.
I grew up with Al Jarreau. We had a band together and worked these places for three years when neither one of us knew we could make a living doing music.
The BBC were not playing the music that was happening on the street so we did an independent production because we knew we had an audience. Then we licensed the album to EMI.
I didn't have a lot of overtly political songs. I think it was more the actions of the group that were threatening to the authorities, and also our political philosophies apart from the music.
The first song that made me interested in music was 'Oh, Pretty Woman' by Roy Orbison. It was the guitar intro, that riff, that I really liked and made me listen in a different way.
I write to music, and Nina Simone is always on my playlist to write to. I mean, she's inspiring. She's truthful and real and raw.
Mostly I've never let record companies become involved with my music, which was a very smart thing that my first manager Dave Robinson did, to keep them out of it.
There's something so wonderful about writing in rhyme where it isn't just the meaning of the words, it's the music to the words and the shape and the sound.
As a producer, I'm trying to challenge myself to just make something that is of a professional quality - not necessarily pop music, but maybe in the sense that Nine Inch Nails is professional quality.
No one likes to work for free. To copy an artist's work and download it free is stealing. It's hard work writing and recording music, and it's morally wrong to steal it.
I want to let everyone hear my music and enjoy it, but just as long as it's fun. I'll go as far as until it gets too much like a day job.
Honestly, Americans are more open-minded and have the patience and the time for new types of music. In Australia and New Zealand, you must earn your place.
A lot of the music that you listen to now is because of the things that the Meters did, the Neville Brothers did, and they're there, the guys who invented those beats that the guys sample today. Such an enormous opportunity.
I would like my album to be on the pop side with a little bit of soul. I would like to make music that is on the top of the charts right now.
I was 12 when I got a small part in a movie in Texas. And in my spare time, I play with my dogs and write music and go out with my friends.
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.
