Quotes About Music

Some of the greatest blues music is some of the darkest music you've ever heard.

And whether you're drawn to gospel music or church music or honky-tonk music, it informs your character and it informs your talent.

There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music but it is a critical, questioning and often angry patriotism.

The hungry and the haunted explode in a rock'n'roll band.

The story I have told throughout my work life I could not have told as well without Clarence.

Clarence once mentioned to me during a negotiation but he should be paid not only for playing but for being Clarence.

The Clash were a major influence on my own music. They were the best rock 'n' roll band. Thanks, Joe.

The Super Bowl helped me sell a few new records and probably put a few extra fannies in the seats that tour. But what it was really about was this: I felt my band remained one of the mightiest in the land and I wanted you to know it. We

Like a Rolling Stone" gave me the faith that a true, unaltered, uncompromised vision could be broadcast to millions, changing minds, enlivening spirits, bringing red blood to the anemic American pop landscape and delivering a warning, a challenge that could become an essential part of the American conversation. This was music that could both stir the heart of your fellow countrymen and awaken the mind of a shy, lost fifteen-year-old in a small New Jersey town.

A good song gathers the years in. It's why you can sing it with such conviction 40 years after it's been written. A good song takes on more meaning as the years pass by.

No money shots! No shifting, grinding, joyfully thrusting crotch shots. It didn't matter. It was all there in his eyes, his face, the face of a Saturday night jukebox Dionysus, the shimmying eyebrows and rocking band.

We learned more from a three-minute record, baby, than we ever learned in school.

If I lose and have nothing when this is over, you can still drop me with my guitar by parachute anywhere in America; I'll walk to the nearest roadhouse, find a pickup band and light up your night. Just because I can.

Max Weinberg, Garry Tallent, Steve Van Zandt, Danny Federici, Roy Bittan, Clarence Clemons. This was the core of the group that over the next forty years would evolve into the hard-rockin', history-makin', earth-shakin', booty-quakin', lovemakin' and, yes, eventually, Viagra-takin' legendary E Street Band.

During the Shadows' five-minute break I was introduced to their front man, Steve Van Zandt. The Castiles by now had a significant reputation, so he knew who I was; we talked a little shop, we hit it off and he went back on for his next set. So began one of the longest and greatest friendships of my life.

We called ourselves Child, and we played the bars and nightclubs of the late-sixties Shore. We played original music with some covers, and the simple fact that we were so good was all that kept us working.

I never wrote completely in that style again. Once the record was released, I heard all the Dylan comparisons, so I steered away from it. But the lyrics and spirit of "Greetings" came from an unselfconscious place. Your early songs emerge from the moment when you're writing with no sure prospect of ever being heard. Up until then, it's been just you and your music. That only happens once.

I decided the world was filled with plenty of good guitar players, many of them my match or better, but how many good songwriters were there?

The rock death cult is well loved and chronicled in literature and music, but in practice, there ain't much in it for the singer and his song, except a good life unlived, lovers and children left behind, and a six-foot-deep hole in the ground. The exit in a blaze of glory is bullshit.

Music on the radio is a shared fever dream, a collective hallucination, a secret amongst millions and a whisper in the whole country's ear.

If you travel for years in an integrated band, you see racism in action.

As Branford Marsalis said in a beautiful essay he write upon Clarence's death, C was blessed with 'the power of musical intent.

Steve and I caught Neil Young promoting his first solo album, his signature black Gibson plugged into a tiny Fender amp, blowing out the walls of the Bitter End.

Fuck the moon landing, that's just a trick of 'The Man'; fuck you, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, let's rock.