I just like music all the way around the board. I can't stick to one thing - I've got to move around.
While I'm here, I'm gonna milk it for all I can, so when I'm no longer hot - and I know that day is coming - I will step over here and enjoy everything I've created up to this point. The music is just opening all these doors, so I can relax.
I wanted to be able to play guitar. I wanted to be able to make music hurt.
I want to make music that will make the blood surge in your veins, music that will get people up and dance.
I really want it to have an impact on the world. I want to be in a town on the other side of the world, and somebody walks up and says, 'That music you made in Glasgow, I listened to it every day, and it moved me.'
I didn't grasp the basic principle of being a promoter, which was: Put on music but also generate an income. I was on the dole most of the time.
People's musical tastes are fickle, and music can be a fashion.
I think in the world of indie music there's this sort of false modesty.
Real music is not for wealth, not for honours or even the joys of the mind... but as a path for realisation and salvation.
Singing instrumental music is most important because, while you play an instrument, you are singing through the instrument... actually, you are singing inside.
When I was younger, studying classical music, I really had to put in the time. Three hours a day is not even nice - you have to put in six.
Things can be really empty in this world, and I don't just mean the music world. It can become a very meaningless place if you don't really understand: 'who am I? Why am I here? What am I doing?' To feel fulfilment and have a deeper level of understa...
My music comes from many, many, many places. My emotions, my feelings, my thoughts, and conversations I have with people I know who influence me.
Mozart would play a counterpart with his left hand while using his right to mock it. It was blue, dark, shadowy - and it made me feel something. That's when I realized music was inside me.
It's not until I hear songs that I've done, that I realize how much of an inspiration music from the '60s and '70s has been.
It's not that I have resisted songwriting, it's just not something I felt I have had to do. I've just not woken up and thought, I must do this. But I have often heard music that I have instantly felt 'I have to sing that song'.
I grew up in a school that had a big music program, and it was incredible. It's what I looked forward to during the day. I had chorus, strings, band.
I think that people respond to honesty in music, so I only choose songs that are the truth for me.
I find the songs I want to record by listening to as much music as I can. 'When I hear things I really like, I ask the writers to send me a tape of everything they've ever written.
I graduated from high school early so I could move to New York to do 'A Little Night Music' out of the New York City Opera.
I think there is always going to be inspired music and there are always going to be inspired listeners and there is always going to be an inspired method of getting it from A to B.
