Ben Harper Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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Country music is three chords and the truth.
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The idea of music is to liberate the listener and lead him to a frame where he feels he is elevated.
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There are so many moments and works that influence us in what we do. Movies, music, TV and, most importantly, the profound everydayness of our lives.
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Being 16 years old and getting an electric guitar is never going to get old. There's always going to be kids making music. There's always going to be kids in bands.
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I started to write a lot of ballads that were sultry and had a Norah Jones-for-country kind of feel. I wanted to bring elements of old soul music and old country music.
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If you ask me, rockabilly has had a raw deal for far too long. People never shunned the blues or jazz the way they do rockabilly. But it's the original punk-rock, and it changed the way people looked at music for ever.
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The music comes through me, and I let it come the way it comes, and it shapes itself. I just hold space for it. I don't intend to write it for a purpose, but it comes as it comes and am proud of the way it can support change because I believe strongly in what I sing about.
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I really believed that my songs were good enough for the whole world to listen to. I had fans from America or the U.K. who would be like, 'Oh my God, I love your music'.
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I work on words quite separately to music. They're both ongoing, and I don't ever feel like I'm working in a cycle in that respect, because it's every day anyway, no matter what I'm doing. Then I get to a point when I've collected together enough words that seem like they want to be songs rather than poems, or sometimes not.
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Young kids should be doing music that has shock value. They'll grow out of it.
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I'm all about telling stories. I like people to picture the music video in their head when they're just listening to the song.
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Most of the music you hear on the radio today is developed for making money. It doesn't feel true or honest. You can feel it in the music.
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I think what made it difficult for people to get, and still makes it difficult for people to get, is the theatrical nature of the work and the fact that, my music doesn't exist without the performance-art element.
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It's my job to make sure that the people I'm gonna team up with for my music see everything that I'm about: Put all my cards on the table and don't make them guess.
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Most experiences are either sensual or intellectual. Chamber music, played by a small group so the listener can follow what each player is doing, is both.
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But anyone who knows anything about the music industry knows it's not only about the music.
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I think music should be experienced by people all ages.
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I definitely use my music to kind of alleviate my stress and get me through specific moments in time where I'm just being really tough on myself.
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Subway Symphony is a little idea I had to change the sound of the subway turnstiles into different pieces of music, depending on what station you're entering.
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The music is key. It has the power to transport you. I go from being a slightly insecure, shy kind of a person offstage, to this super-confident, motivated, entity onstage.
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Your mind burns a lot of calories. Writing can feel like a physical workout.
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The conceptual artist Ai WeiWei illustrates the schizoid society that rapid change has produced - sometimes by reassembling Ming-style furniture into absurd and useless arrangements, or by carefully painting and antiquing a Coca-Cola logo on an ancient Chinese pot.
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People come up to me and they thank me: 'I thank you for the many, many hours of laughter.'
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I refuse to make uninspired music.
