Roxy Music Quotes
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It must be really hard to be starting out in music now.
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You either believe that people respond to authority, or that they respond to kindness and inclusion. I'm obviously in the latter camp. I think that people respond better to reward than punishment.
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Once you've grown to accept something and it becomes part of the system you've inherited, you don't even notice it any longer.
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People do dismiss ambient music, don't they? They call it 'easy listening,' as if to suggest that it should be hard to listen to.
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Art is not an object, but a trigger for experience.
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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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I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school.
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Attention is what creates value. Artworks are made as well by how people interact with them - and therefore by what quality of interaction they can inspire.
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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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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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Cooking is a way of listening to the radio.
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If you've spent a long time developing a skill and techniques, and now some 14 year-old upstart can get exactly the same result, you might feel a bit miffed I suppose, but that has happened forever.
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I make a lot of pieces of music that I never release as CDs.
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If there is a new fascism, it won't come from skinheads and punks; it will come from people who eat granola and think they know how the world should be.
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I'm not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.
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The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band.
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It's not the destination that matters. It's the change of scene.
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When I started working on ambient music, my idea was to make music that was more like painting.
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It's fabulous when you do that, when you discover somebody who you like, when you kind of feel those feelings, even though he articulates them better.
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Words can be very powerful. I find them very difficult.
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I periodically realize every few years that the only person whose taste I really trust is me.
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When I stopped touring in the early '80s for a few years, it was a mistake looking back. I lost touch with my audience in a way and I think that was a bad career move.
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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 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.”