Top 119 Quotes & Sayings by Ian Brown

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English musician Ian Brown.

Last updated on December 23, 2024.

Ian George Brown is an English singer and multi-instrumentalist. He was the lead singer of the alternative rock band The Stone Roses from their formation in 1983. Following the split in 1996, he began a solo career, releasing seven studio albums, a greatest hits compilation, a remix album, an 11-disc box set titled Collection, and 19 singles. He has performed solo shows in 45 countries. He returned to singing for the Stone Roses in 2011, although this did not spell the end of his solo endeavours, releasing First World Problems through Virgin/EMI Records on 25 October 2018.

English - Musician | Born: February 20, 1963

Source: Wikipedia

I'd like to write songs for other people, see things from a different perspective. I'd like to watch things from the dugout instead of the pitch.

Ian Brown

I feel like the Ryan Giggs of music.

Ian Brown

People in Russia learned English off the Beatles. People in Japan learned English off the Stone Roses. Noel Gallagher says music can't change the world, but the Roses made him want to start a group, so it changed his world.

Ian Brown

I'm solo, and I love being solo. I believe I went through the Roses so I could become a solo music-maker. That's what I believe.

Ian Brown

Hell is being stuck in a lift with Elton John and the Queen Mother.

Ian Brown

Getting a grey beard's not cool.

Ian Brown

I like a lot of that Chicago stuff, house music.

Ian Brown

I've never chatted up a girl in me life. I've always let girls come to me. I've never approached a girl to chat her up.

Ian Brown

They've had a hard life, the Oasis brothers. They've done really well to be semi-normal. It's always sad when your dirty linen is brought out in public.

Ian Brown

I see The Stone Roses in '89 as Technicolor: we were all about joy and possibilities of life.

Ian Brown

Stardom's transitory. Nothing really changes except people's attitudes.

Ian Brown

We wrote 'Stellify' for Rihanna, but as we got to the end of writing it, I thought, 'You know what? I'm gonna keep this for myself. We'll give her another one.' She'd have probably sung it better, but it is too good for me not to do it.

Ian Brown

I used to be one of those kids who couldn't keep my mouth shut.

Ian Brown

We started out to finish groups like U2 - that was what it was all about.

Ian Brown

I was skint, and I had to move back to my mum and dad's house, back into the room I shared with my brother when I was a kid. I kept getting people on the streets telling me that they loved me; it didn't mean anything to me because I was still borrowing tenners off my pensioner father to go and get some chicken.

Ian Brown

When you live in Manchester and it's raining every day, you've got to imagine the sun sometimes. When you're brought up in concrete, you aim for the green leaves. And when you get to the green leaves, you yearn again for concrete.

Ian Brown

Oasis are okay, but they're like The Sun: base.

Ian Brown

I've always said prayers.

Ian Brown

The jails are full of kids from kids' homes. You're 16 years old, and you're out on the street. How you going to fend for yourself at 16 if you've not had an education? You're going to turn to crime.

Ian Brown

Belief outweighs talent. Self-belief's got me everything, self-belief.

Ian Brown

I love karaoke - I usually do Blondie's 'Heart Of Glass,' or 'Try A Little Tenderness.'

Ian Brown

I don't like to play anywhere with a banner for Carlsberg or vodka or whatever. I'm not a drinker myself, and I don't like feeling like I'm working for the liquor companies.

Ian Brown

I'd love to see the world without liquor for a week.

Ian Brown

It's a horrible name, Coldplay. It doesn't conjure up any positive thoughts.

Ian Brown

Since we were kids, we grow up believing that astronauts are heroes - that to go up in a rocket is a heroic thing. These guys are bigger than movie stars. To me, it's... all a well-dressed-up lie, basically. There's billions spent on rockets up there, and there's millions starving down here. It don't make sense to me.

Ian Brown

'Psychedelic' means mind-expanding.

Ian Brown

I went to a friend's 40th in Manchester, and there was a karaoke machine, and no one was having a go. My mate said, 'No one's singing because you're in the room.' I said, 'Who am I, Frank Sinatra?' They made me sing flipping 'My Star' to a backing track that sounded like '80s Roxy Music. It was pretty embarrassing, but I did it.

Ian Brown

You're never going to improve on a Michael Jackson song if you cover it.

Ian Brown

Northern soul was huge in Manchester in the '70s and '80s; I went to a lot of all-nighters.

Ian Brown

People want to adulate people.

Ian Brown

People tend to settle for the fiver rather than going for the pot of gold.

Ian Brown

We're all anti-royalist, anti-patriarch. Cos it's 1989. Time to get real.

Ian Brown

I started managing myself in October 2004, and since then, it's gone up and up.

Ian Brown

I thought it would be more interesting to make a musical autobiography than an actual autobiography.

Ian Brown

When The Stone Roses first came out, the early reviews called me 'simian.' I had to look that up at the time.

Ian Brown

You're never alone on the dole in Manchester.

Ian Brown

Putting another human being above yourself isn't healthy. I think it's capitalistic.

Ian Brown

The Beatles were great; we know that. But we were trying to do a new thing. Why do we need to recreate the Sixties?

Ian Brown

I can't think of anyone who's reformed for art's sake. That's why the Roses will never reform.

Ian Brown

I love people, me, I believe in people. I love people too much.

Ian Brown

Even me mum can't tell me what to do.

Ian Brown

I'm lucky enough to be one of them music makers who can do a dance festie or a rock festie.

Ian Brown

I spent the summer of '88 indoors, writing 'Shoot You Down,' 'Bye Bye Badman,' and 'Don't Stop.'

Ian Brown

When I was 9, I was into T. Rex, Gary Glitter, and Alice Cooper. I knew The Beatles because my nan introduced me to them, but T. Rex was the first band I got into myself. I got 'Metal Guru' a few months after hearing 'Children of the Revolution' in Pwllheli in North Wales at a market.

Ian Brown

We're against hypocrisy, lies, bigotry, show business, insincerity, phonies, and fakers.

Ian Brown

England's a small nation, and the pop music industry is built on fashion.

Ian Brown

Just because I'm a successful singer who's loved and has been loved for years doesn't mean I'm sitting behind electric gates in my own fantasy land.

Ian Brown

My sister bought me the Koran in 1990. I always thought the stories in it were magical.

Ian Brown

In March 1977, I taped the single 'Career Opportunities' off Piccadilly Radio, which was the '70s equivalent of downloading, and then the album came out in April 1977.

Ian Brown

I was jailed for using words that I still dispute. Anyone who's ever met me will tell you that I'm not a violent person.

Ian Brown

I was really into punk when I was about 14.

Ian Brown

My biggest fault is that I give people too much credit. Then they let you down. I'm 99.9 per cent perfect - that's how I look at myself and, therefore, everybody else too.

Ian Brown

I don't actually personally get off on guitar music.

Ian Brown

I am gentle. I think nearly everyone who makes music is sensitive - I don't care how hard they pretend they are.

Ian Brown

The Roses should have made it as the biggest band since The Beatles, but we didn't.

Ian Brown

You'll never find a Manchester band slagging off another Manchester band, but within each Manchester band, people will rip each other apart: Mondays, Smiths, New Order, Roses, Oasis.

Ian Brown

When the ravens leave the Tower, England shall fall, they say. We want to be there shooting the ravens.

Ian Brown

I wasn't on stage to be worshipped or for people to look up to me. I was with the crowd.

Ian Brown

Everybody is a star. It's true. And if you've got a light, don't let it go out. 'Cos some people sink under.

Ian Brown

Some of the kids who discovered me from my 'F.E.A.R.' record or one of the U.N.K.L.E. tunes have said, 'I don't even like the Roses; I love your solo stuff.' I buzz off that.

Ian Brown

Top 119 Quotes & Sayings by Ian Brown

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