Roxy Music Quotes
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I want to rethink 'surrender' as an active verb.
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The trouble with New Age music is that there's no evil in it.
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I believe that singing is the key to long life, a good figure, a stable temperament, increased intelligence, new friends, super self-confidence, heightened sexual attractiveness, and a better sense of humor.
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Musicians are there in front of you, and the spectators sense their tension, which is not the case when you're listening to a record. Your attention is more relaxed. The emotional aspect is more important in live music.
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As struggles go, being an artist isn't that much of one.
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Why should I spoil my mood by wearing an ugly suit?
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I suppose I am reluctant about being any sort of 'star' and I didn't particularly want to be portrayed as one.
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The seven white notes on the piano - each section of the piece (there are 12 sections) is five of those seven white notes. If you calculate it, there are 21 groups of five notes in any group of seven notes. And although there are 12 sections, this piece actually uses nine of those groups because some of the sections repeat earlier ones. So that's the formula. It's very simple as a way of generating something. It's my inner minimalist.
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American television really is pathetic.
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Pop is totally results-oriented and there is a very strong feedback loop.
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A way to make new music is to imagine looking back at the past from a future and imagine music that could have existed but didn't. Like East African free jazz, which as far as I know does not exist.
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My guitar only has five strings 'cause the top one broke and I decided not to put it back on: when I play chords I only play bar chords, and the top one always used to cut me there.
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I think that sex, drugs, art and religion very much overlap with one another and sometimes one becomes another.
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One way of working is just bring a group of totally different musicians together and encourage them to stick to their guns, not to do the thing that normally happens in a working situation where everyone homogenizes and concedes certain points - so eventually they're all playing in roughly the same style. I wanted quite the opposite of that. I wanted them to accent their styles, so that they pulled away. So there would be a kind of space in the middle where I could operate, and attempt to make these things coalesce in some way. In fact quite a lot of my stuff has arisen from that.
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I cant duplicate my own successes, because part of the creation of that effect is making something happen that you didn't expect.
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Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That's what surfers do - take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we've become incredibly adept technically. We've treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part.
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When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.
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One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn't if you knew better.
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Composition is a way of living out your philosophy and calling it art.
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Sometimes you're quite fortunate, being on the stage, getting to meet people like Salvador Dali.
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I think that technology is always invented for historical reasons, to solve a historical problem. But they very soon reveal themselves to be capable of doing things that aren't historical that nobody had ever thought of doing before.
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If you watch any good player, they're using different parts of their body and working with instruments that respond to those movements. They're moving in many dimensions at once.
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The great benefit of computer sequencers is that they remove the issue of skill, and replace it with the issue of judgement.
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It's quite funny that, 20 years ago, one would have thought putting out a fragrance would [negatively] affect your musical credibility. Now it may enhance it.