Roxy Music Quotes
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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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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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I can't drink a wine if it has an ugly label.
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In the wake of the events of 11 September 2001, it now seems clear that the shock of the attacks was exploited in America.
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Culture is everything you don't have to do.
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I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant.
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I had an interesting day. I was in the studio with a group of musicians, who shall remain nameless, and I said to them "Our exercise today is not to use 'undo' at all. So, there's no second takes. Or, if you do a second take, you have to do the whole take. There's no sort of drop in, change that little bit". The session broke down in, I'd say, 40 minutes. It was impossible for people to work in that restriction any longer.
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Other bands wanted to wreck hotel rooms; Roxy Music wanted to redecorate them.
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Pop music can absorb so many peculiar talents, ranging from the completely nonmusical poseur who just uses music as a kind of springboard for a sense of style, to people who just love putting all that complicated stuff together, brick by brick, on their computers, to people like me who like playing conceptual games and being surprised.
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I like to piece together different guitarists, unlikely bedfellows. You have Jonny Greenwood playing next to Nile Rodgers on the same track, so it becomes like an orchestra of sounds.
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Every band I've worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they've gone somewhere that nobody else has been.
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When I work there are two distinct phases: the phase of pushing the work along, getting something to happen, where all the input comes from me, and phase two, where things start to combine in a way that wasn't expected or predicted by what I supplied. Once phase two begins everything is okay, because then the work starts to dictate its own terms. It starts to get an identity which demands certain future moves. But during the first phase you often find that you come to a full stop.
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Democracy is a daring concept - a hope that we'll be best governed if all of us participate in the act of government. It is meant to be a conversation, a place where the intelligence and local knowledge of the electorate sums together to arrive at actions that reflect the participation of the largest possible number of people.
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I don't want to do free jazz! Because free jazz - which is the musical equivalent of free marketeering - isn't actually free at all. It's just constrained by what your muscles can do.
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I hate talking about music, to tell you the truth.
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I do sometimes look back at things I've written in the past, and think, 'I just don't remember being the person who wrote that.'
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I trust my taste. I trust it completely and I always have done, and I've always thought it isn't that different from everybody else's.
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It's insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it's assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It's that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he's telling you something about his own life. It's so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!
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The prospect of music being detachable from time and place meant that one could start to think of music as a part of one's furniture.
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I like the name Atomic Kitten. It's so great.
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Even though I'm known as a pop musician, I have a seriousness about what I do.
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I felt extremely uncomfortable as the focal point, in the spotlight. I really like the behind the scenes role, because all my freedom is there.
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It's nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn't think of.
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I think it's a myth that American public or any other public is so stupid that they need to be constantly pricked.