Quotes About Music

In 1979, I moved to England and photographed Joy Division and Bowie and Beefheart. At that time I got images that I felt had that special, well - power is a big word to say - more like intimacy and ambition that outlasted the photo shoot. I felt that they would have a longer life.

Listening to Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna gave me the confidence I needed to get up on stage and be photographed every night on tour.

I wanted to be a rocker and photographer and tour the world!

I have always said that it is completely about the music, and I have never been interested in anything else. I think I've been able to maintain that. I'm a totally normal person, I don't get followed or have photographers waiting outside my door. So yes I have a very ordinary life.

The reason I do photographs is to help people understand my music, so it's very important that I am the same, emotionally, in the photographs as in the music. Most people's eyes are much better developed than their ears. If they see a certain emotion in the photograph, then they'll understand the music.

I'm always interested in seeing how other artists work. I want to know what their working patterns are. I even like to know if they listen to music when they draw or what time of day they draw, even materials they use, what they research, if they use photographs.

I was a very creative child. I played the saxophone and piano, and I was always writing poetry and stories, or drawing in my notebook. I just tried to express myself through as many creative outlets as possible. And in high school, I started to get really into photography and videography and would spend hours working on it.

I began to see cinema as the perfect combination of so many wonderful art forms - painting, photography, music, dance, theater.

Music, photography, media, film - it's all going to be free on the Internet. We have to accept it.

I just wanted to be creative, so I did photography, and that led me ultimately to music.

A film carries six fine arts - it consists of architecture, painting, music, writing or literature, photography and performance. It's a conjecture of all these things and yet based on literature.

I use a lot more chords than most organists and I'm careful to phrase them with the guitar.

I just make up lyrics off the top of my head. A lot of times, there's a phrase I really like, and I kind of build the song around that.

If you feel you have the right key, you try to make some phrase or sound that will fit.

I respond to mood. I hear some phrase, or pick up a rhythm.

I'm definitely influenced by the music. We dance to music, and you have to listen to it and phrase your dancing and movement in a certain way to compliment the music. We have to work hand in hand, the dancer and the music.

I'll hear a phrase around me that someone says... I'll write it down in my notebook, and as soon as I'll sit down with my guitar, I'll come up with the rest of the arrangement there.

Some writers are curiously unmusical. I don't get it. I don't get them. For me, music is essential. I always have music on when I'm doing well. Writing and music are two different mediums, but musical phrases can give you sentences that you didn't think you ever had.

I love the physicality of instruments, and instruments as objects, like dancers are bodies.

No matter where you are or what you're doing, it's always great if you don't have to get up and physically change the song that plays next.

What I couldn't say verbally I was able to express physically through the guitar.

I don't organize myself sufficiently to get an album of material together, book the studio, and go. I need to be kicked; I need to be forced physically to go in. That's how it works for me. I'll get a great idea in the house, and it'll stay there unless somebody comes and drags it out of me!

It's harder to play drums than guitar, physically. I'm always kind of on the edge. I guess that's how I play everything: on the edge of my ability.

I have never been more physically tired than after that first song of my first concert.