Quotes About Music

I see everybody arguing about what the value of music should be instead of what I think the bigger conversation is, which is that music has value, it's subjective and we're moving to a new era where the audience is taking more responsibility for supporting artists at whatever level.

I've always been one for show business. I like performing, and I used to get criticized for having production value. But now it's all that! People need to get what they pay for! Otherwise, just listen to recorded music.

Bollywood songs are losing their poetic value.

A lot of the music I was inspired by growing up - college rock, DIY, what they used to call indie rock - has a value system where truth-telling and authenticity are oppositional with mass media, showbiz, and commerce.

Pakistan never valued Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan saab until English songwriter Peter Gabriel started collaborating with him. After that, the country suddenly realised that they have an amazing talent. This is the story of a lot of artistes there.

I don't want to just make music as I want to be legendary. I understand it has to be commercial as I have to feed my family. I am in between these two marks and they are not many people in this space. I want my work to my valued even if my face is forgotten.

It's important to recognize how special New Orleans is. You play the snare drum or the clarinet in any other city, and you'd be considered a nerd, but here, there's no shame in it, and it's absolutely valued.

I think the reason composers aren't valued is because many act as servants rather than music directors. Instead of taking a stand based on their convictions, they sway to the opinions of others.

Great music is in a sense serene; it is certain of the values it asserts.

THE STONES WERE putting out a new edition of Exile on Main Street, which was another excuse for a party at our house. It's always fun to watch Keith arrive anywhere, never a quiet entrance. He's just got so much in motion on him: earrings, bracelets, rings; things twisted into his hair, headband, and hat; shirt unbuttoned; scarves, beads, and necklaces, plus a belt with a skull or something similar

Stevie Winwood, on Traffic's first tour, was our first office visitor from the world of music.

WE WENT TO Paul Simon's farewell concert at Madison Square Garden. He was seventy-seven; I never thought someone could retire from rock and roll. Paul's music triumphed over his stiff personality, and the show went right onto my all-time-best list.

Rolling Stone, still a hippie newspaper in San Francisco, won for its stories on Altamont and Charles Manson

John Lennon was on the first cover.

The first Rolling Stone interview was with Donovan.

I led the record review section with Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant ("excellent")

I brought Yoko to meet the Gorbachevs, who embraced her. Mikhail told Yoko how much he admired John's peace crusade and his music

I decided to put Donna Summer on the cover of an issue in March 1978. Disco was considered the music of the anti-Christ by many, and the staff was up in arms.

NINETEEN SEVENTY-EIGHT WAS the year of Some Girls, which I thought was the best Stones album since Let It Bleed in 1969.

At one point Jonathan said, "You have said you didn't want to be singing 'Satisfaction' when you were forty-two." "No. I certainly won't.

In our first issue of 1983 we reported on a new piece of equipment only available in Japan, the $1,000 compact disc player, with the headline "Will the Compact Disc Make the LP Obsolete?

PETE TOWNSHEND WROTE a lengthy essay, "A Discourse on Mick Jagger's Fortieth Birthday," and sent us a picture of himself holding a lit candle with "Happy Birthday Mick" written across his chest.

With Janis, there was a lot of hurt.

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ'S FIRST cover shoot was Grace Slick.