Quotes About Music

Music is for people. The word 'pop' is simply short for popular. It means that people like it. I'm just a normal jerk who happens to make music. As long as my brain and fingers work, I'm cool.

I never took guitar lessons. I took classical piano lessons from the age of six when we lived in Holland. And when we moved to America, it was just the typical thing except I was really good at it so was my brother.

On 'Van Halen ' I was a young punk, and everything revolved around the fastest kid in town, gunslinger attitude. But I'd say that at the time of 'Fair Warning ' I started concentrating more on songwriting. But I guess in most people's minds I'm just a gunslinger.

I'm blessed with a good pair of ears. That's how I fooled my piano teacher. I'd watch his fingers and I'd listen to it, and I just kind of basically learned it by myself.

You know, most people, they want to go to Hollywood. They want to be a star. They want to be a rock star. That thought never entered any of our minds, the Van Halen family.

It's funny, when bands or younger musicians ask me: 'So, what does it take to make it?' Well, first explain to me what you mean by 'making it': Do you want to be a rock star or do you want music to be your livelihood?

When I'm home on a break, I lock myself in my room and play guitar. After two or three hours, I start getting into this total meditation. It's a feeling few people experience, and that's usually when I come up with weird stuff. It just flows. I can't force myself. I don't sit down and say I've got to practice.

I'm not a rock star. Sure I am, to a certain extent because of the situation, but when kids ask me how it feels to be a rock star, I say leave me alone, I'm not a rock star. I'm not in it for the fame, I'm in it because I like to play.

I mean it's funny, playing music, how of course you want it to do well, you want them to like it, but it's not competitive like an election, it's the Olympics, it's not a Formula 1 race. The Billboard charts are just to show you what people like.

Music was your real passion, this thing you held dear even above family. It was this relationship that never betrayed you. Once it became your job - this thing that was highly visible, this thing that became about commerce - that's when you were holding onto music like it was a palm tree in a hurricane.

Pretty much at all times music motivates me. How can I say this without sounding in any way proud of myself? Obviously I've always written songs that are critical of our government, and talk about our times. Hopefully you attempt to be timeless while doing it.

I think the hardest thing about making music now is being a great dad at the same time. There's an insanity that goes with writing - a mad scientist thing that you have to go through - and sacrificing a kid's upbringing to do that is not an option.

I think music is the greatest art form that exists, and I think people listen to music for different reasons, and it serves different purposes. Some of it is background music, and some of it is things that might affect a person's day, if not their life, or change an attitude. The best songs are the ones that make you feel something.

Is this Enya?" "Grimes," Sarah said. "Sounds like Enya." "Whatever, Nickelback.

The neighbourhood was silent in the early morning, aside from the guy at the end of the street who played non-stop Slayer in his garage.

Keeping time, time, time,In a sort of Runic rhyme,To the tintinnabulation that so musically wellsFrom the bells, bells, bells, bells,Bells, bells, bells.

The viol, the violet, and the vine.

The history of the music industry is inevitably also the story of the development of technology. From the player piano to the vinyl disc, from reel-to-reel tape to the cassette, from the CD to the digital download, these formats and devices changed not only the way music was consumed, but the very way artists created it.

If you learn music you'll learn most all there is to know.

Out of me unworthy and unknownThe vibrations of deathless music.

The earth keeps some vibration going There in your heart, and that is you. And if the people find you can fiddle, why fiddle you must, for all your life.

When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had, and never will have.

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

When I did it with Johnny, it was almost a telepathic kind of communication.