Quotes About Music

I had three older sisters whose record collections I borrowed, so I was listening to The Velvet Underground as well as Bach and brass band music.

I read Slash's book because we were on the road together with Velvet Revolver when that came out.

I don't think I'll ever be able to fully explain the way that the Velvet Underground's records opened a door in my head. But it has something to do with Lou Reed as a mythic figure: a person who fitted no category, who defied limits and trends and definitions.

The reason I went ahead with making the music for 'Bombay Velvet' was because I loved the script.

Sweet Jane' is my favorite song by Lou Reed the writer, at least the Velvet Underground Lou Reed.

I like Velvet Underground, but I was never really hardcore into them. I like them, and I like Nico, but I won't front like I'm super knowledgeable. I just never got around to it.

As a teen, I heard the second Velvet Underground album, 'White Light/White Heat,' and it was too much for my limited scope of appreciation. It was intense, but I didn't get it.

I guess, for me, what started me getting real excited about music was the New York punk and new-wave scene. All those bands looked back to the Velvet Underground and the Stooges and the Modern Lovers as well. But that was back when Television were punk, and the Talking Heads were punk.

At 18, I moved to L.A. with my heavy metal band Avant Garde, which was very much influenced by Metallica. At 19, I got a job at Tower Records, and everything started to change very quickly. I started listening to the Velvet Underground, Pixies, early Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and also earlier music like the Beatles.

If you asked me to sing a modern song, I wouldn't be able to - I can't easily slip into that groove. But if it were a song by Nico or The Velvet Underground, fine.

When I was 13, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground made more sense to me than anything else.

'You Talk' was originally a copy of a certain Velvet Underground song.

The Velvet Underground is probably the best band that's ever existed, assuredly the best American one.

I am working on 'Bombay Velvet'. The music for it is jazz from the '60s.

When we came along in 1982, music was getting boring - like 1976 when punk hadn't happened. We wanted to be rock 'n' roll. We grew up with The Velvet Underground, the Stones and Mars bars and Marianne Faithfull and we knew we didn't want to be boring - and we weren't!

We played Carnegie Hall, and that was one time where I felt... Carnegie Hall as a legendary, very venerable place to perform. I'd never heard of anyone going into the Hall and kind of standing on the seats and playing throughout the aisles and having the audience stand on the seats. So when we did that in 2013, even for me it was a shock.

For me, Venezuela is very important, not just because it's a place I go to conduct, but because my family is there - my wife, my parents and my musical family.

At some point in your life, if you live in Venezuela, you come across or own a cuatro. Either at school, either at camp, either at a friend's house, at a birthday or Christmas or bar mitzvah, you end up with a cuatro. It's like a must.

Growing up in Caracas, Venezuela, the ubiquitous music is salsa, cumbia, merengue, a little bit of samba.

You can be very connected, computers are great, they can get you a ticket to Venezuela in five minutes; brilliant. But if you know your music and your history, you can make that work as a tool. If you don't, you're working as a slave to it.

There were certain Ray Charles albums and a couple of early Marvin Gaye records that I used to listen to with a vengeance. That's how you forge a style. It excites you, and you lean toward it almost unconsciously. I was also a Beatles fanatic, but I didn't emulate them the way I did the R&B artists.

When you have a very hot single there is no reason why it can't drive album sales. People fall off and come back on. I'm looking forward to coming back on with a vengeance.

Writing music is such a freeing exercise, and it's really nice to play in that world of being confident, vengeful - getting back at all the bad boyfriends.

My mother took me to Venice one time and showed me all the houses where famous composers used to live. It gave me a fascination for music and the city, but also for architecture. It was a valuable lesson.