Roxy Music Quotes
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Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature... The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.
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The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don't set out to say anything very important.
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I think, if you spend a day or - as many people do - a life working only with that aspect of your being, the cerebrum connected to a finger, I feel that the rest of you atrophies, essentially.
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I'm fascinated by musicians who don't completely understand their territory; that's when you do your best work.
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I believe in singing to such an extent that, if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing becomes a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, encourages a taste for cooperation with others.
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Sometimes something intrigues me about particular sounds, how they work together, and I think "Okay, I've found something here; I'm going to take it somewhere." And sometimes just to find a name for that sound, whatever it is, ends up becoming a title of the piece or becoming part of the title.
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I met John Lennon and he was with his wife in Tokyo. I met him there.
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I can never predict what's going to happen.
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I don't really have a great deal of spare time. I still have a house in the country, but I'm in London 90 percent of the time.
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When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it's done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.
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Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing - 'Oh, let's put that sentence there, let's get rid of this' - have become commonplace in films and music too.
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What matters in modern music is not the part you can write down, the words and the tune, but the rest - the texture, the atmosphere, the references and associations.
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It's good having a lot of different songs to choose from to do the show. It means you don't get bored of doing it in one particular genre.
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Every collaboration helps you grow. With Bowie, it's different every time. I know how to create settings, unusual aural environments. That inspires him. He's very quick.
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I like lots of songs, and I find it quite interesting to do [cover songs] from time to time. My first solo hit was in 1973, the Dylan song “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.”
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Everyone in rock 'n roll including myself was touched by Elvis's spirit, I was, and always will be a fan.
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I can't drink a wine if it has an ugly label.
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Words can be very powerful. I find them very difficult.
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It must be quite mysterious to some people why I bother to carry on. Because, you know, I don't sell that many records.
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The problem with computers is that there is not enough Africa in them.
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I often say to people that producing is the best-paid form of cowardice. When you produce things, you almost always get credit if it's a good record, but you hardly ever get the blame if it's not! You don't really take responsibility for your work.
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When I started making my own records, I had this idea of drowning out the singer and putting the rest in the foreground. It was the background that interested me.
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I had a lot of trouble with engineers, because their whole background is learning from a functional point of view, and then learning how to perform that function.
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I didn't really want to give up music.