Quotes About Music

I've taught Sunday school, I've sung in the choir, I directed a choir.

I believe that classical music comes through listening and practice, and it can be fun both for the singer or performer and the listener or audience, as long as the performer is taught to recognise the pulse of the audience.

I taught myself how to play the guitar. I never studied music.

Piano was - well, all musical instruments were taught in this very rigid, formal, classical method when I was young.

Bob Rock taught me a lot. His friendship has taught me a lot about what you should expect from a recording session and, more importantly, how you shouldn't expect anything less than absolute joyousness. You should feel great. You should feel 14 to be doing it. It's true and it's rare.

I am very good at remembering music and am absolutely certain that I never heard 'Taurus' until 2014.

I slept fourteen feet from a polka tavern as a kid growing up. I heard polkas all night long, people singing and drinking beers and having a great time. I know more polkas than Frankie Yancovic!

Maybe I should get back to the music-writing phase and write one on tax reform.

I was using computers for music in the '70s, '80s and '90s, and people didn't get it. They thought you should only use computers for your taxes and making pie charts.

It's exciting to sing in the place where you pay your taxes.

I don't feel that old, but when I talk to these kids, I do feel old. Because I'm talking about taxes and all this other stuff that is very, very boring. And these guys are talking about music, and I'm like, 'Oh, I remember those days.'

My first tour, for six weeks straight, was with Bobby Darin, in 1958. It was just fun hanging out with him. He was older than I was; he was a college guy. It was kind of a mutual-admiration society, I guess. He taught me how to pay taxes.

When I pull into a city and I rent a car and it's Nashville, or it's London, or I'm driving in the taxi to the hotel, and on comes one of my songs, it's like, 'Oh my God, they're still playing these songs on the radio.' And you still feel tearful and very grateful that somebody still likes these songs that you made up.

I'd sing with Roberta Flack in a taxi if you called up and said she'd be in it.

Taxi drivers used to ask me what kind of music I did, and I'd say, 'Well, it's kind of jazz, soul, classical' - but that makes no sense to anyone.

When I was really little, I wanted to be a taxi driver or a bus driver; I loved the fact that I could play my own music when I wanted. But I can't imagine actually doing that now; I think I'd get bored.

Taylor Goldsmith and I hit it off big time, and so we started writing some songs together.

I thought the best thing to do to bring me back to reality would be to have a child, and by the time I had my first, Taylor, when I was 25, we'd sold 35 million records as a band, and I'd had enough; I knew my sanity was more important than success.

When someone is themselves through their music, it's soul music. James Taylor is soul music to me 'cause it's just him talking about him. It doesn't have anything to do with black or growing up in the church; it's where it comes from. It's just soul music.

If I could play drums like Patrick Carney or Taylor Hawkins, I'd be a really happy person.

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

Someone who gave me a lot of confidence was my friend Martin Taylor, he's the most famous man in Bolton. He is a pianist and used to play in one of the local pubs. He would sing everything from classical to rock to pop. He was amazing.

I started playing guitar and writing songs when I was 15. I think what mainly sparked my interest was just the fact that I grew up listening to Cheryl King, Joni Mitchell, and James Taylor, and was just always inspired by that sort of organic art, and organic songs and just very natural songwriting that came out of some of those artists.

The records that I grew up listening to had feel, and the drummers that inspired me - like Stewart Copeland, Neil Peart, Phil Collins and Roger Taylor - all had their own voice and individual style.