Brinsley Schwarz Quotes
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So you can be about your business, and then on it comes again. And this time you're ready, and you've got a wine glass or something. And you put the glass up to the wall, and you can hear through the wall a little bit more of the song - maybe just the middle bit this time. You know, you managed to get in a little bit of the end. And so it goes on until - because you just got to - you really just want to sing it.
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I suppose I was waiting until I was old enough to have some sort of experience to sing about. When you're young, it's hard to sing the blues. Nobody believes you.
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I like being a big fish in a small pond. I'm not interested in a huge audience because it brings headaches.
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I felt that in order to do what I wanted to do, I had to do certain things, and one of them was to have a hit in my own right. At least one.
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Later in life, suddenly, if you're an outsider, it's something to be celebrated, I think, rather than getting on people's nerves.
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You try to make every word count, so there's no doubt what you're talking about. When you're young, you waffle away. Well, I'm done with that. I think it's much more interesting to say just what you mean.
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Cruel to be kind means that I love you.
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When I find a cover song that I like, I'll work away at it until I kind of believe that I wrote it.
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So where are the strongAnd who are the trusted?And where is the harmony?Sweet harmony -'cause each time I feel it slippin away, it just makes me wanna cry:What's so funny 'bout Peace, Love, and Understanding?
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I'm really lucky that I've had a little gang of people who I've been involved with for a long time... I've been really lucky to have a gang of people who have always been there to encourage me to get on with it. Styles come and go, but I try not to take any notice of that.
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I knew how the suits used to talk about the artists, with barely concealed contempt. So I knew what was waiting for me round the corner. Because I wasn't one of those very unusual people like Neil Diamond or Elton John, whose careers just seem to span the decades. I knew I wasn't one of them.
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I used to sort of take the phone off the hook, you know, put my feet up and watch the TV until it was all over.
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The number of contemporary artists who appeal to me is infinitesimal.
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"I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day," which I actually recorded on "Quality Street" because I don't think anyone has ever covered it before. You hear it every single Christmas, and it is a great record. That's by Wizzard. It is a really great record, but I don't think anyone's ever covered it before, so I had to go it doing it differently. It's quite different from how the original goes.
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Well, this is shortly after the idea was put to me because it wasn't my idea to do a Christmas record. We can talk about that a little bit, if you like, later on. But I wrote that song actually about two days after the idea was put to me.
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There's really never any sort of master plan. I find if I've got a couple of tunes that I think are possibilities, I phone everyone up and get them into the studio and we'll have a go at recording them.
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And religious music and the sort of symbolism of it and everything. But I had this idea. Actually, I sort of dreamt it. I woke up - just before waking up one morning, I sort of dreamt this song or the idea of it and the first little bit of it. And I jumped out of bed and I thought, well, you're still asleep. You're going to forget this in a minute - you know, like you do when you've had a dream.
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What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?
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The older I get, there doesn't seem to be anything remotely more interesting than talking about love and the lack of it and what happens when it's taken away from someone who's had it.
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And then, one day, they program a new tune, and it really catches your ear, you know, because you can be doing the washing up or something, you know, in your apartment and suddenly you go, whoa, what are they playing in there? And you run to the wall, but it's finished - but the song's finished. You only heard enough of it just the pique your interest. And you never know when they're going to play it again, of course, like a normal radio station.