Quotes About Music

A priest once said to me, 'Think of a priest going to the altar as you walk out on the stage.' I would hate to think that anyone thought I was coming to preach. But art and music open up things that you can't put into words. It's about bringing joy when you go out there.

Japan is brilliant for vinyl. There's all this rare stuff that I've been looking two years for, and you walk into a store, and you find it straight away.

A lot of rappers don't have to go through what I had to go through as a singer. I was always in a bubble that they put me in, but I was always punching out. It was a tough line to walk.

If I walk away from music, I walk away from myself.

I actually met The Game in my hood on Crenshaw and Slauson. I was outside on the block with 20 of my homies. I see the Range Rover, and we all walked up to his car. I handed him my CD.

Things have changed so much. People walked away from a simple life we had in the '20s and '30s, and I am glad that I am able to touch that period in our lives with the shows that I do and with the music that I do.

When I lived in a little flat in Pimlico in 1981, I'd write in the hallway. As you walked in, there was a tiny little recess type thing, hardly a hallway, really, and I'd sit there writing songs with my guitar.

It confuses me and disappoints me when somebody says, 'What does he do? What does he do?' My records are some of the biggest anthems ever. What do you think, they magically just appear? Obama walked out to my record.

Electric Gypsy' was really raw. I was literally sketching out the lyrics as they walked in the door. I jumped up and had a sheet of paper and I showed them the chords, which are simple. We counted it off, I got the lyrics off the sheet into the song and played a solo at the end - done!

But I still feel like a normal person... I've walked the streets and I know what it feels like. I speak with humility, and apparently those songs connect with people.

At first, Hendrix went and became a superstar in London, but if he walked past the Apollo in Harlem, no one would know who he was. I'm the hip-hop version of him.

When I was ordained as a pastor, I walked away from secular music for seven, eight years. It took me that time to learn that God is love.

When I walked into the studio, the chorus of 'Nobody Love' was already set. For me, the challenge was to make it have depth.

The first one I remember singing on stage was 'Somewhere Out There' from 'An American Tail.' I was around 7, and my choir teacher at school asked me if I would sing it. My parents told me that I needed to move around the stage, so for the entire time I just walked back and forth from side to side while I was singing - there's videotape of it.

First time I walked out on the Opry stage, Vince Gill was there. He kind of 'daddied' me through the whole thing. My knees were knocking. I walked out there, and I was literally shaking. They say it's the spirits or the ghosts. And out of respect for that whole establishment, I was really really nervous.

I'm a massive fan of Drake, and we walked right past him. He's too cool to be clapping One Direction though.

I'm not interested in gigs unless I really want to do them. I walked away from music in 1997, and then there was a greatest hits in 2002. Thank God, it didn't do too well because the record company wouldn't promote it.

I walked out of the Chinese restaurant with a fat check, a record deal, and a box of shrimp egg foo yung!

I was three years old, and I walked onstage during a performance that my father was a tenor in 'The Barber of Seville.' I walked out onstage, and people started laughing and clapping, and that was it. That was all it took. Laughing and clapping, I still enjoy today.

When 'The Dark Side of the Moon' was a new album in 1973, a friend of mine walked into my room where I was working with a copy in his hand and said, 'You really have to do a play about this album.'

The Phantom, as well as being backed up by that music, it just so was a role that I identified with so powerfully. From the first second that I walked on to perform.

I still like to keep tapes of the few minutes before the final take, things that happen before the session. Maybe it's superstitious, but I believe if I had done things differently - if I had walked around the studio or gone out - it wouldn't have turned out that way.

Black Sabbath was written on bass: I just walked into the studio and went, bah, bah, bah, and everybody joined in and we just did it.

I actually picked up copies of Decline I and II at a flea market once. I walked out without paying.