Roxy Music Quotes
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Some people are very good at being 'stars' and it suits them. I'm grudging about it and I find it annoying.
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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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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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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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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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Art is not an object, but a trigger for experience.
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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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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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Cooking is a way of listening to the radio.
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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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I make a lot of pieces of music that I never release as CDs.
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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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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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When I started working on ambient music, my idea was to make music that was more like painting.
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I'm an atheist, and the concept of god for me is all part of what I call 'the last illusion.' The last illusion is someone knows what is going on. Nearly everyone has that illusion somewhere, and it manifests not only in the terms of the idea that there is a god but that it knows what's going on but that the planets know what's going on.
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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 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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I'm fascinated by musicians who don't completely understand their territory; that's when you do your best work.