A Quote by Billy Joel

Twyla Tharp put it together from the material I wrote and recorded over my whole career. I thought it was pretty good, but how objective could I be? — © Billy Joel
Twyla Tharp put it together from the material I wrote and recorded over my whole career. I thought it was pretty good, but how objective could I be?
I think Twyla [Tharp] has a lot to say. The great thing about Twyla is that she continues to explore.
Has there ever been a dance career with more ups and downs than Twyla Tharp's? Or with more varied ambitions? Or larger ambition?
It's more in retrospect as I've thought about it over the years and look back at what I wrote, how I wrote things - like there's a song that Ralph Stanley later recorded with me that he had guested on my record what was called "Travelers Lantern" that I wrote as basically, you know, a hymn.
Twyla Tharp is not going to take orders from anyone, not even Mozart!
I was used to dancing, but only when someone told you what to do. So in the nightclub I was all over the place, I combined everything. Street dance, modern dance, a bit of jazz and ballet, I was Twyla Tharp, I was Alvin Ailey, I was Michael Jackson. I didn't care, I was free.
Twyla Tharp set her sights on ballet, and ballet, hungry for major talent, succumbed.
When you study history in American schools, very rarely is the name John Brown mentioned. We know who Kanye West is or Twyla Tharp or Shania Twain.
I find that the time that goes by is actually your best friend when you are making a record. The passing of time gives you perspective on what you recorded and what you wrote. If something sounds good to you 12 months after you recorded it then chances are pretty good that there's something valuable about the part or the song.
We're getting the blues about having to walk away from this whole thing. We enjoyed it a lot and it all felt good. We had a good experience on it. We thought we could do good work together. And it is unusual to get the next one, straight off the bed. John is funny. When he gets moving, he moves pretty quickly.
I have spent over 60 years bent over a guitar and to know that I wrote 70 compositions that masters have recorded, that makes me feel so good and full, and proud and thankful to the good Lord.
I think for a lot of artists, if you're lucky enough to have a kind of career, especially toward the end, you start to think about what the whole ensemble looks like. It's the whole that counts. The parts are given, but you don't know how the whole thing's going to look when it's all put together.
I guess Johnny Depp has a pretty good career. I love a lot of parts that actors have played, so I love pieces of their career, but it's pretty hard to look at an actor's whole career and go, 'That was awesome!' Usually it either ends on a crappy show or with no work at all.
I saw Mikhail Baryshnikov do Twyla Tharp's Sinatra Suite on PBS. I have no numbers to prove it, but I bet that kids who saw that loved it. I think you will see younger dancers, who certainly have the artistic sense and capabilities, start going back to romantic numbers.
I didn't know how to grab your best material and put it together into a comedy set. I would just choose subjects and do it onstage. That's what I learned. I didn't know how to put a set together.
My scripts, they're pretty serious. I basically just describe stuff. I don't put too many notes and letters to the editors. But when I wrote 'KGBLT,' in parentheses I wrote, 'Well this is the best thing I've ever written. It will all be downhill from here. I'm so sorry for the rest of my career.'
As a kid, I used to sit there and figure out how to play everybody's song, and through learning all those songs I learned how to put chords together, and it evolved till I could say, 'Hey, I just wrote that.'
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