A Quote by Richard Bonynge

I like digging around. I'm a real magpie. I used to raid the old music shops in the early '50s in Paris and Brussels. You could pick up some incredible and often valuable music for almost nothing back then.
I grew up around music. My father was a professional musician. We used to have a trailer house that we travelled in. I've always loved music. Started out loving to sing to the standards and songs of the early 50s, then that interest shifted to rock and roll, Motown, folk.
And you should hear the music. Incredible, amazing music, like nothing you've ever heard, music that almost takes your head off, you know? That makes you want to scream and jump up and down and break stuff and cry.
Growing up, I was definitely surrounded by music all the time. My parents used to always play music; my dad used to have reggae on. I remember walking around with a cassette recorder, and I used to just record the songs I would hear on the radio so I could play it back when I feel like.
I would find myself being inspired by things that I've heard as a kid: Nigerian music or African music, some French music or some Jamaican music. When it's time for music to be made, it's almost like my ancestors just come into me and then it's them.
I lived in Italy for a number of years and I was really digging around trying to get my hands dirty, trying to learn about Italian music. And what I ended up gravitating towards was this stuff from the '50s and '60s and maybe early '70s, where there were these incredibly talented pop singers that weren't using pop bands.
The first music I bought when I was nine or 10 was pop music from the '50s and '60s, like The Everly Bros., Elvis, Del Shannon, The Flamingos, The Platters, whatever I could get my hands on. And then some musical things, like Camelot, Singing in the Rain and Hair.
I have the ability to go back to the old days with the boys and remember what it was like playing music. I have that real connection to the feeling of playing music as a young man. I do. I can almost touch it.
I'm a real big electronic music nut; when I was young I listened to musique concrète, German music from Cologne in the early 50s, all kinds of stuff.
I began by tinkering around with some old tunes I knew. Then, just to try something different, I set to putting some music to the rhythm that I used in jerking ice-cream sodas at the Poodle Dog. I fooled around with the tune more and more until at last, lo and behold, I had completed my first piece of finished music.
Nothing is going to stay the same; nothing's gonna sound like in 1952. There's some stuff that has some elements of back in the day, like back in the 90's, back in the 80's or whatever. Some elements, but it's not going to be the same, exactly, sounding. And I love it, I've seen the music change. I've seen the flow and the energy go from turned up to turned down to back to turned up. I like to try different stuff. I don't like to do the same old thing over and over again. I don't like to be repetitive, that gets on my nerves.
My husband and I were in Paris for the weekend and I hated wearing anything that was in style. I really loved '50s dresses, so we started going around Paris and hunting this stuff down. It became like this treasure hunt. From then on, I felt like a pirate every time I left Paris.
By the mid-'60s, recorded music was much more like painting than it was like traditional music. When you went into the studio, you could put a sound down, then you could squeeze it around, spread it all around the canvas.
I just remember falling in love with the old Chris Brown music, where it was, like, that real R&B, and I love the radio smashes he's put out since then, but I go back to his older music for that R&B.
I'm a real magpie when it comes to music; it's all random, and there's no pattern to what I like.
If anything, I feel that the current generation of listeners of heavy music are progressing a bit passed their gateway bands and are digging deeper than they used to and understanding more abrasive and complex music and art. It's like being around an unfamiliar language long enough that it eventually begins to make sense.
Back in the day, music imitated life. Now it's the opposite way around: life is imitating music. It's like whatever the rappers say, people think that that's how we're supposed to be; but back then, we kind of looked at the streets, and we made music for that.
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