What is true about music is true about life: that beauty reveals everything because it expresses nothing.
Music acts like a magic key, to which the most tightly closed heart opens.
Most people die with their music still locked up inside them.
Nobody in my family was musical. I had no idea you could be a songwriter and make a living at it. It was all discovery. It was all just thrown at me.
What we ask of music, first and last, is that it communicate experience - experience of all kinds, vital and profound at its greatest, amusing or entertaining at another level.
It's always interesting to me that we all hear music differently. It's an awesome experience to hear what other people hear.
I have no experience performing that music live in front of an audience. So that remains to be seen. I'm very excited to see what that's going to be like.
To me, music has to be about freedom. It's the most important thing in my life.
I like playing music because it's a good living and I get satisfaction from it. But I can't feed my family with satisfaction.
One of the basic things about a string is that it can vibrate in many different shapes or forms, which gives music its beauty.
Maybe I'm old-fashioned. But I remember the beauty and thrill of being moved by Broadway musicals - particularly the endings of shows.
You know, the music business is like the Lotto. Just put your numbers down and sometimes they hit, and sometimes they don't. There's just no rhyme or reason.
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 think musicians and artists are the most philanthropic people I know. Their charity record of the music business would hold up to the work of anybody.
The labels are in a jam. For a company to do well in music now, it's got to be in all aspects of the business. And Live Nation is the risk-taker. It's leading the charge.
It costs a great deal of money to do a musical, and the more money involved, the more big business influences the artform.
This is a business built on promotion. We've been giving music away to radio stations for 30 years.
I heard someone from the music business saying they are no longer looking for talent, they want people with a certain look and a willingness to cooperate.
Maybe I'm a dreamer, but I think the ordinary guy has just as much right to say 'This is a good song' as somebody who is in the music business.
You know how it is with drawers and labels in the music business. They don't want anything to be complicated. They just want it simple, as simple as possible.
My parents worked for Exxon, and they gave me every chance to take part in music. I took guitar lessons, and I was in the choir at school.
