While other kids played with cars and toys, I listened to music all day. I wanted to sing it and learn it.
The ability to make music is a gift that you're born with; it's not something you can learn.
Music has nothing to do with your technical ability.
Everybody was on the same page. Nobody has really gone out there on a different musical journey. When we got back together again, we all wanted to do the same kind of music.
I slowly started to drift back into music again. I finally got the call from John... about getting the band back together again. It was so out of the blue. I almost thought that the moment had passed.
Writing songs is about trying to connect with people on a deeper spiritual level - but I'm not a fan of contemporary Christian music.
I grew up listening to English music.
We need self-confidence in our ability to build Africa. I trust in Mali and I trust in music.
I loved music - listening and playing - but of course I could not imagine I would be a professional musician. It really happened step by step.
I play only classical music. My pianos are my only big indulgence, but they're a necessity. When I'm playing the piano is literally the only time I can be completely abstract and disconnected from the regular world and yet be connected - to my music.
I go and see music all the time.
But in the next world I shan't be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it.
Even people that know Johnny Cash's music really well and know that he was married don't really know that much about June Carter. So finding out about her really helped to inform my performance and to bring her to the front in a way that she has neve...
Music is very similar to comedy: It's all about texture, timing, context, vocabulary, performance. When someone's onstage doing a solo, essentially it's the same thing as what a comedian does. They're in the moment. They're listening.
I guess, in a way, I grew up mixed race: half white, half black. That question's always been on my mind: 'What are you? Are you this or that? Are you a white dude or are you a black dude?' In a strange way, music and comedy is kind of the same thing....
I'm very interested in writing an actual series, that doesn't have too much to do with my music - a world I create that has characters in it. I'm just trying to get there by doing things that I want to do.
I guess as a kid, I was always creative, and I was involved in music, like piano and violin and choir, so I always knew - I always knew that I wanted to do something that would allow me to be who I am. Generally, that was creatively, imaginatively.
I write music with an exclamation point!
Richard Wagner, a musician who wrote music which is better than it sounds.
The studio is not the place to write. You need to be 75% ready when you go into the studio, and then the music can develop to the next stage.
I would have loved to record with Paul McCartney on some of his early solo recordings, wonderful music. Playing some lovely organ, perhaps. I would have loved to record with John Lennon. He was a dear friend. I had lunch with him just two days before...
