Quotes About Music

My brother John loved Big Bill Broonzy, and from that, Angus and I discovered Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy. We could relate to what they were singing about. When a family uproots itself and moves to the other side of the world because your dad couldn't get a job, you didn't feel part of the system, if there even was a system.

Is there one blues guy who was the most sophisticated and influential, like Duke Ellington or Louis Armstrong in jazz? Was it Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Lightnin' Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Robert Johnson, or all of them? I think you have to pick all of them.

I love Bach cello suites, I love punk music, I love old blues, negro spiritual quartets, Muddy Waters' 'You Need Love.' There is a simplicity but also a bite that connects all that music, from the growl in the cello to the timbre in Muddy's voice.

When I left Free back in 1972, I didn't play 'All Right Now' until about 1996, when I was touring with Jason Bonham, and we were supporting the tribute record we had done to Muddy Waters.

It was awesome growing up listening to Oasis and Paolo Nutini, but I also loved growing up listening to Ray Charles and Muddy Waters.

My dad was very influential with the music he exposed me to. He was really into blues and folk, so he'd play me guys like Muddy Waters and T-Bone Walker and Richie Havens - a lot of very emotional players.

The whole 'Muddy Waters' title is not about things look or how deep it can get or it can be. It's just the slouchiness of the album.

Ray grew up in Chicago so he had the blues, Muddy Waters and all that. He also had classical training. That was pretty cool. That was invoked in the intro to 'Light My Fire,' which was very kind of Bach-like.

I grew up in the eighties; that's probably why I like some of the earlier electronic from Kraftwerk to all throughout new wave and things like that.

The art of remaining consistent is keeping your ear to the street and the new music. Embracing the culture for what it is. You can't get a nice heat wave and then forget about the people. The more you put out music, the more strength and power you possess.

I have specific playlists for arrivals in different cities. Tokyo skews new wave, Paris more jazz, and New York is Top 40.

Prince turned experimental music into pop music. 'When Doves Cry,' the whole 'Purple Rain' soundtrack - he was inspired by the Cocteau Twins and new wave pop and brought it into R&B when he first started, and then it became this cool, next-level, kind of hard-to-digest music. Which is what I felt 'House of Balloons' was.

All I really wanted to do was make an album that was going to be just back to what I like to do... And it was a coincidence that these new bands, this new wave of bands, were doing Alice and Iggy rock.

'Course, 'Santini' bombed in England, y'know. It came out at the height of the New Wave, which couldn't have been a worse time for a solo singer trying to sell rock melodies.

The guitar influence that affected my songwriting came from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal.

I don't really hear much music these days that grabs me. I think there are a lot of reasons for this but the overriding one is that there aren't as many opportunities for a band to get good or experiment or start the next wave of something.

We got lucky because we both happened to land TV shows. It was easy to ride that wave as long as possible because making music takes up so much time.

I can't really choose how I'm going to connect to music. I find it just has to hit a wave, and just wash over me and take me completely to some other space.

Absolute 80's is three hours of mainstream 80's music. I also do New Wave Nation that is more cutting edge. It is more punk stuff from the 70's to the 90's.

After the Ramones, it was more about new wave for me than punk.

When I started out as a music journalist, at the end of the 1980s, it was generally assumed that we were living through the lamest music era the world would ever see. But those were also the years when hip-hop exploded, beatbox disco soared, indie rock took off, and new wave invented a language of teen angst.

Bands like R.E.M. and even The Replacements, during that initial wave of college rock, would sell 40, 50, 100,000 copies of a record, and that would be seen as extremely successful - and definitely enough to keep doing more.

Music is a huge inspiration to my style. I first got into it when I was 10: the new wave mod scene.

When we did Diplomats music, it was all genuine, and I think that's why people love it so much, because they seen a group of kids from Harlem that had almost nothing come up to be platinum-selling artists, and people rode that wave with us.