Top 1200 Rock Musicians Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

Rock 'n roll was born in the South, man. It's like saying rock-rock.

Rap is the new rock 'n' roll. We the real rock stars, and I'm the biggest of all of them. I'm the No. 1 rock star on the planet.

When I was growing up, I fetishised New York City. It was the land of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, it was where Leonard Cohen wrote 'Chelsea Hotel', it was CBGBs and all the punk rock clubs. Artists and musicians lived there, and it was cheap and dangerous.

I feel like musicians have such a precarious place in the political discourse, because musicians are, sort of just by nature, people-pleasers.

Musicians and non-musicians alike are priding themselves on the width and breadth of their musical interests, which I think is to be encouraged.

Marijuana is taken by musicians. And I'm not speaking about good musicians, but the jazz type.

There is an apprenticeship system in jazz. You teach the young ones. So even if the musicians weren't personally that likable, they felt an obligation to help the younger musicians.

I'd photographed musicians before but this was different. Syd was very charismatic, and he had the aura of a poete maudit, which made him the perfect subject for me - I realised that rock n' rollers were the modern equivalent of all the poets I was so enamoured with.

Rock was born in the South, so saying 'Southern rock' is like saying 'rock rock.'

Three-6 Mafia, we were always doing different kinds of things, and we like rock music, we like whatever - not saying they was rock, but they had a little rock-n-roll with some of their music, a little rock with it.

This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.

I wanted to make the kind of records that I heard in the discos that I danced in at that time. Funky, electronic sounds, while the musicians in the band were more rock oriented. This I suppose created the sound we know as Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

There is a limited supply of excellent songs, but I am not the only one. Paul McCartney, one of the best songwriters of all time, has only produced manure for the past 25 years. Rock musicians over 30 only produce unimportant material.

When people are saying "rock is dead," it's making everything worse. I would like reword and say "rock is underground." We're really being alienated from every possible facet. Rock radio doesn't even play rock bands anymore. So, they've pretty much stripped away every outlet for us to reach the fans.

I feel like I'm a rock artist. I don't feel like I'm a pop artist. And I'm alt rock. I'm indie rock. I'm punk rock. Because it comes from the pots and pans. It's a lot of me, but I've got multiple personalities.

Jazz was the beginning of rhythm music, which developed into rock and roll. But what the jazz musicians lost because they were so far from their homeland was the intricate rhythms of African music.

Being a musician, people ask you a lot about what musicians inspire you, and there's plenty of musicians that I love and respect, but I think that I'm the most inspired by cinema.

Especially, I don't want to ever be compared to The Rock because I'd be the poor man's version of The Rock. I'm just not him; it's not who I am as a person or as a performer. The Rock's very big and bold, and I'm not.

Good rock 'n' roll is something that makes you feel alive. It's something that's human, and I think that most music today isn't. ... To me good rock 'n' roll also encompasses other things, like Hank Williams and Charlie Mingus and a lot of things that aren't strictly defined as rock 'n' roll. Rock 'n' roll is an attitude, it's not a musical form of a strict sort. It's a way of doing things, of approaching things. Writing can be rock 'n' roll, or a movie can be rock 'n' roll. It's a way of living your life.

So many policy decisions that effect musicians are being made without any input from musicians at all.

The big stadiums get totally packed, and everyone knows the words, and it's screaming young girls. I met a whole bunch of great Nashville musicians, and they accepted me in their community. Classic rock and country music go well together.

A lot of musicians talk about how they were into music from the start; they always wanted to be musicians. It wasn't like that for me. I didn't think of it as a job or a career - it was just something that was constant.

Electronic musicians are quite like writers or painters. They are quite isolated in their home studios. We often don't have that the opportunity to collaborate with that many people, like in rock or jazz.

I'm thrilled when I hear the greatest jazz musicians. They continue to search in ways other musicians do not.

I'm not going to ask musicians to sit there and pretend to play. It feels insulting to the musicians to me.

I always tell people that, just to be a bad jazz musician, you have to be better than most musicians. The worst jazz musicians are normally better than most musicians, because you have to know so much.

It's my real name. My mother's name is Rose Rock. It was the worst name as a kid to have. They called me Piece of the Rock, Plymouth Rock, Joe Rockid, and Flintstones. Now they call me Mister Rock.

There are so many different musicians I look up to for different reasons - from hip-hop to rock to pop. Some are Alanis Morissette, Michael Jackson, Aerosmith, Pink, Avril Lavigne, Beyoncé, Lil Wayne.

It's an endless proving of myself, that I really am a musician, that I have something to offer in the room. That women can be musicians, women can be rock stars, women can be more than an objectified idea of a pop star.

Rock evolved out of rebellion, so when you turn on the Billboard Awards or something like the Grammys, and there's no rock on there, that's a good sign - because that means that rock is not welcome inside of a pop format.

I'm one of the people who was a pioneer in encouraging musicians, early in the game, to get interested in technology, and now all the musicians are getting into it.

I think Baltimore is a wonderful artistic community with a lot of great musicians. It's kind of like a little secret for musicians.

When it comes to musicians, I'm like the daddy of musicians here in Cuba.

The music I like to play is Rock 'N Roll. I like to rock like a wild animal. I like to rock it well enough to whip a yak's ass. I love to rock it good on a horse's ass. I like to rock it real hard. I love to rock it all the way to Russia. I like to kick out the Jazz and kick it out all the way.

I think musicians are perfect at knowing how to get the best out of other musicians. I can really relate to that communion.

We're not just R&B guys. We can do pop, rock, blues . . . a wide variety. We are musicians and play several instruments. We understand how to record things live and work with an orchestra. We can also program with a drum machine and work with all the other computerized components that are current today.

I sat down one night and wrote the line rock, rock, rock everybody.

It's funny, when bands or younger musicians ask me: 'So, what does it take to make it?' Well, first explain to me what you mean by 'making it': Do you want to be a rock star or do you want music to be your livelihood?

The sudden passing of Jack Bruce is terribly sad news. One of the greatest rock bassists to ever live and a true and profound inspiration to countless musicians. He was one of my first bass heroes and was a major influence on my playing and my music. My heartfelt condolences to his family and fans.

Musicians know all about unemployment. You're unemployed a lot, and I think there's a great deal of empathy between musicians and people who are out of work.

We're [with Robbie Robertson ] jazz musicians. The context may be rock 'n' roll but it's still jazz. It's jazz and that means improvization...you play a tune the way it feels and you play it differently every time. It can never be the same.

When we look at a rock what we are seeing is not the rock, but the effect of the rock upon us.

Because the blues is the basis of most American music in the 20th century. It's a 12-bar form that's played by jazz, bluegrass and country musicians. It has a rhythmic vocabulary that's been used by rock n' roll. It's related to spirituals, and even the American fiddle tradition.

There's no difference in a lot of people's minds between good musicians and popular musicians.

To all musicians - forget gender - to all musicians, it's about - do what makes you happy. Just go for it, you know?

Orchestral musicians have a different approach than we do, and when I say 'we,' I mean musicians who don't know what they are doing.

People had this idea about becoming rock stars packing stadiums instead of having the goal of becoming what musicians used to be in terms of how they would perform and connect people.

The moon is high. The sea is deep. They rock and rock and rock to sleep.

There seems to be an inclination among rock musicians to be very carefree with money, but I negotiate the best flight and hotel deals on our tours to maximise the band's income - I don't want too see too much taken off the top line.

Musicians can look forward to playing with the best musicians that ever played. They can even have their own band!

You know, being in a rock band, you can't overdo the costume changes too much because everyone thinks, oh, that's not a real rock band. Look how many times he changes costumes. That's not rock. Rock's about going on in a T-shirt and staying in it and getting it all dirty. But that's not really my approach.

No, it's the musicians and I must say they are an accomplished bunch, but odd, as musicians tend to be. Is it the vibration from their instruments, do you suppose, working on the brain? All that fraught buzzing?

The place that I found where European musicians and American musicians come together is that odd middle world which is called uncertainty.

I just felt like women love musicians, so I thought that we should become musicians. It'll help my dating life.

What I try to do is produce an atmosphere where musicians want to invest in what they do and give to the recording. I hire those musicians who I know will play something creative and interesting.

Rock and roll is not an instrument. Rock and roll isn't even a style of music. Rock and roll is a spirit that's been going since the blues, jazz, bebop, soul, R&B, heavy metal, punk rock and, yes, hip-hop.

If North American musicians would only know how uncomfortable life is for European musicians.

It's just a joy to be able to work with a lot of different musicians. When you play with great musicians, whether they're schooled or self-taught, they keep you on your toes.

I visited New York in '63, intending to move there, but I noticed that what I valued about jazz was being discarded. I ran into `out-to-lunch' free jazz, and the notion that groove was old-fashioned. All around the United States, I could see jazz becoming linear, a horn-player's world. It made me realize that we were not jazz musicians; we were territory musicians in love with all forms of African-American music. All of the musicians I loved were territory musicians, deeply into blues and gospel as well as jazz.

I'd been watching documentaries about early rock where white artists took 'race records' from blues and soul musicians to achieve mass appeal. I wanted to flip that and do an EP covering only white artists.