A Quote by David Byrne

All you needed was a couple of instruments and a few chords and you could be on an indie label.

David Byrne

Quote Topics

Chords Could Couple Few Indie Instruments Label Needed

Quote Author

David Byrne
Scottish - Musician
Born: May 14, 1952

I had the most frustrating thing happen when I was trying to find a label. I sent my album to this indie label, and they were like, 'We already have two girls on the label. I'm so sorry, we just can't take your project.'

Margo Price

I'd only do a deal with a label if it allowed me to still be indie and have that indie mentality. I have to have creative control.

Dawn Richard

I had received some minor indie label interest when I was 14 after I was in a schools music competition thing in NZ called 'Rockquest', but I knew it wasn't the right time and that I wasn't good enough and needed to concentrate on school.

Brooke Fraser

That's the best thing about being with an indie label, it feels like a family. If it's a major label, they put so much pressure on every single.

Freya Ridings

When I got my record deal at Atlantic, at the time, 'indie' wasn't a style of music: it was a kind of label. And I think, eventually, the bands that ended up on those labels began to be branded as 'indie bands,' and then it became a genre.

Kristian Bush

When I was 12 or 13, my dad taught me a couple of different chords, and once I learned chords, I never learned to read music, but I learned tablature, like a lot of kids do, and I learned songs that had the chords I knew. It took me a long time to understand the upstroke of picking and strumming, but once I did, it all fell into place.

Thomas Rhett

This was early '90s and in New York hip-hop was coming on really strong; that was the sort of urban folk music that was almost threatening to eclipse rock music and indie rock music in terms of popularity, which it has certainly gone on to do. But you know, this is the end of the 1980s, beginning of the '90s. The whole independent label thing has really evolved to this incredible point from the early '80s when we started, and there wasn't one record label at all, until a couple people started forming these small labels.

Lee Ranaldo

I remember in 2016 when I got signed to my record label Good Soldier, which is a very small indie label. They took a big risk on me because ballads were the furthest thing from cool at the time.

Freya Ridings

When I started, they told me I only needed 3 chords and the truth... It turned out I could manage with 2 and some vague ideas.

Joe Strummer

After writing quite a few songs now, I have not a method but a way of being patient with a couple of verses or a certain set of chords. I can match them up quicker now than I used to. The one thing you do improve is songwriting.

Rory Gallagher

I have a day job Monday to Friday. I work at a record label in Brooklyn called Ba Da Bing. It's a great indie label and I listen to music all day. I meet people online and find out about the cool new music blogs.

Sharon Van Etten

To go indie is a thing. But to put an album in the stores, you need a distribution label.

Drake

Just because I run an indie label doesn't mean I don't think Jay-Z is nice.

El-P

When we opened Babbo, we were an indie band. Now we're kinda Apple. We have 19 restaurants and 2,800 employees, we are no longer perceived as the indie band although we think of ourselves as the indie band, and we operate our restaurants as individual indie bands.

Mario Batali

Men can construct a science with very few instruments, or with very plain instruments; but no one on earth could construct a science with unreliable instruments. A man might work out the whole of mathematics with a handful of pebbles, but not with a handful of clay which was always falling apart into new fragments, and falling together into new combinations. A man might measure heaven and earth with a reed, but not with a growing reed.