I think when you put a new record out, everyone has a song or two that they feel people will be moved by so much that radio will be forced to play it.
Always I was dreaming of a record contract. From 10 to 13, it was all I could think of. I worked hard for this dream. Nobody could say I didn't try.
You're just so excited that you have this record deal or this movie opportunity that you don't stand up for yourself and say, This is what I want to do.
I was always a huge fan of E. E. Cummings. He did a series of lectures at Harvard or Princeton, and they were recorded. And they were incredibly moving.
Yeah; I'm a much better blues player than anybody knows, but being in the kind of group I'm in, we were always trying to make popular records.
I'd like to do a record that doesn't even reference actual places. Because I think it's kind of an open-ended concept. It doesn't have to be taken so literally.
I think it's my interaction with journalists that has pegged me more as political than my actual records, although they have obviously political aspects to them as well.
My friend has a baby. I'm recording all the noises he makes so later I can ask him what he meant.
Charlie Patton, who was born in 1891, recorded some of the very first blues. In 'Pony Blues' and 'Peavine Blues,' he manages to pile dense layers of rhythms one upon the other.
Everyone is looking for connections between the songs. I don't usually approach a record as a concept. There's no overriding theme I'm trying to represent. It's all about the individual songs.
I think that debut albums are supposed to sound sort of raw. You don't want to record 'Sgt. Pepper's' as your first album, because where do you go from there?
I'm not on a record like some rapper trying to boast about my clothes or where I'm from. I'm creating stories, experiences, the way places make me feel, the way a person makes me feel.
You never know what's going to happen sometimes, or what you think's going to happen never happens, or when you least expect it, the Santana record comes along and just blows up.
For eight or 10 years, I got wrapped up in chasing records. Everything was a number. Didn't matter what I won, it was a number. Every horse I rode was a number.
I had already done Rainbow in Curved Air and had a big record on CBS. I was launched to have a long career and then I just dropped out and went to India.
Throughout the evening I would be recording these long saxophone delays and about four hours into the concert, if I wanted to take a break I would just play back the saxophone.
I want to be known as a professional weirdo. There aren't many Salvador Dalis or Buckminster Fullers left. If I become popular enough, I can establish the next step for records.
When you do a record like 'Talk,' and you're happy with it, and it reaches your ambitions and then doesn't sell as well as you wanted, it kind of takes the wind out of your sails a little.
Fairy tales since the beginning of recorded time, and perhaps earlier, have been “a means to conquer the terrors of mankind through metaphor.
Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, That we may record our emptiness.
I'm a bit of an insomniac. I'm always thinking. I've got a lot of ideas for lyrics and shows. I have a notepad by the side of the bed and voice recorders around the house.
