Top 99 Quotes & Sayings by Samuel Ervin Beam - Page 2

My folks had a lot of Motown records, so that was a kind of an early inspiration. I grew up on the radio really.

You can sand something forever. You can keep working on it. All the arts are like that: there's no magical finish line. You get sick of working on it or you walk away.

I've learned a lot from being on a major.

A thing can be too pretty and perfect, so if you kick some dirt on it, then it feels like you wore it around a bit.

I don't write Plastic Ono Band stuff, though I love that record.

I don't really make particularly abrasive music, but at the same time I wouldn't change something to make people like it.

Anything to shake you out of the normal habits is good.

Saxophones are awesome.

As a writer, there is only so much of your own life you can draw on.

My day-to-day existence is, honestly, a little boring.

I didn't really intend on having a music career. It just kind of happened.

I'm not a particularly macabre person.

The Beatles showed with 'Sgt. Pepper's' that you can make an album out of anything, just make it seem like it's connected.

You can treat musicians like actors - you give them a roadmap but don't tell them what to do, and let their personal style or interpretation speak in the piece. And in both film and music, you create a space where people feel safe to do their best. You treat songs like scripts that can be interpreted a lot of different ways.

I find making records by myself incredibly boring.

At art school you realize that in order to stay engaged you have to ignore the critics, good and bad.

I don't really listen to a lot of stuff that sounds real similar to me because I work on that kind of music all day. I end up listening to more jazz, stuff that I can't really play.

I feel like anytime you write about people in an honest way, you can find connections to any issue you would like.

I was drawn to painting and filmmaking because I was interested in communicating visually, which spills over into my tendencies as a writer.

I don't watch that much TV.

What's around the corner is always more exciting than the corner that I'm on, unfortunately.

I'm a movie buff, and I'm interested in the craft of it.

Love songs are helpful. We've always needed as much love as we could possibly need.

I learned early on that you do yourself a disservice trying to replicate the record onstage every night. As a player, and for the audience I think, it's a mistake.

I have a certain amount of creative energy, and it used to go painting. Now most of it goes to music. I like to make things. I treat the songs more like poems than prose, so in that sense, I don't really have a point to make. I just try to be surprised.

A lot of the big-budget movies, craft-wise, are amazing, but have a boring story. And the indies have their idiosyncrasies.

I'll always err on the side of art for art's sake.

I listen to everything: noise, classical, jazz. I like lots of different types of food. There's no way you could get me to eat the same meal everyday, so why would I do the same with music?

Sometimes you have to be reminded where you were at the time, and songs are a good vehicle for that. It's so funny how those things are connected with your memory.

The things that have been most popular with people have always been a total surprise, and so I've never felt like I could really truthfully predict public taste, so why bother?

We all have holes inside. We need love.

Every time I play with a new musician I absorb something, even if it's someone you don't like!

I don't advertise what I do to my kids. I don't go around waving a flag. I'm sure they are proud, in a certain way. I'm not like 'hey kids - check this out.' No matter what they do, your dad is still your dad. Nothing is going to help you out in that regard. Dad is just not cool.

Every musician that comes along teaches me something.

I like short records in general that you can swallow in one sitting.

I liked 'The Omen.'

I like having a big band because it gives you more options. They can always not play and I can do the quiet stuff, but when we want to do the big arrangements, we can.

Well, for me, I grew up in the Carolinas, and it's our mythology. Those are the characters that we learn about how to live life and moral lessons. It wasn't Zeus and Athena. It was Job and Jesus.

It's nice to play new songs, but it's nerve-wracking.