- All Quotes
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In order to win you must be prepared to lose sometime. And leave one or two cards showing.
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As a developing musician, skiffle became a platform for me to start playing music.
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When all the dark clouds roll away And the sun begins to shine I see my freedom from across the way And it comes right in on time Well it shines so bright and it gives so much light And it comes from the sky above Makes me feel so free makes me feel like me And lights my life with love.
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What was happening with me, with the album [A Period of Transition], with the people who took the pictures, the record company, everything, getting a new manager [Harvey Goldsmith]-it was all saying a period of transition to me so that was the title choice. It says what it is and obviously nobody is going to analyze that. It's exactly what it is.
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I do see value in music criticism. Most of the criticism I have received over the years has been very good.
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I'd love to live in Ireland but I'd like to live as me, not what someone thinks I am. People don't understand - I lived there before I was famous.
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Someone once described me as a maverick and that's what I would say. I'm a maverick not by choice but by conviction.
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I think when you get past your second album, it all becomes something of a routine. So you have to struggle against that, find a way of making what you do sound fresh and new each time.
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Being famous was extremely disappointing for me. When I became famous it was a complete drag and it is still a complete drag.
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All the girls walk by dressed up for each other, and the boys do the boogie woogie on the corner of the street.
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There is no black-and-white situation. It's all part of life. Highs, lows, middles.
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Even today, skiffle is a defining part of my music. If I get the opportunity to just have a jam, skiffle is what I love to play.
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It was really strange for me when I started to play concerts in America where the audiences were all sitting down.
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There's always got to be a struggle. What else is there? That's what life is made of. I don't know anything else. If there is, tell me about it.
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I just can't stand it [jazz/rock]. It just doesn't sound right to me. It doesn't hit me...it doesn't get me...it just doesn't grab me.
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Large audiences did not suit my low-key approach.
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I've never felt like I was born with a silver spoon at all, although I've felt like howling at the moon a lot of times!
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People think I'm eccentric, cranky. If I'm eccentric because I've never been into mainstream things, then I am eccentric.
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When I started studying tenor saxophone as a kid in Belfast, I did so with a guy named George Cassidy, who was also a big inspiration.
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Singing is my profession - there is no plan B.
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I am about the arrangements and the layers of depth in the music.
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I never bought the commercial thing, at any stage of the game.
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These days politics, religion, media seem to get all mixed up. Television became the new religion a long time back and the media has taken over.
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I'll tell you what does impress me: the fact that a lot of the cats who were our idols are still out there doing it. That impresses me very much.