Quotes About Artists

I want people to feel what it was like in the '40s. That's when popular music in the United States was so beautiful. Frank Sinatra, the Pied Pipers, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Tommy Dorsey, Billie Holiday. That's when popular music had deeper values, to me. This was music that was selling millions of records.

If the goal is to get the best artists, actors, and filmmakers in the world to create the best movies, Hollywood does a decent job. And I think no one would disagree with me that it also makes a ton of bad movies and employs a bunch of hacks.

However, the radio and national media depend much more on the hype from a good record label, and from a ' buzz ' about a band, then from just one or two good shows. There are a lot of artists that have a ton of good press going for them, and still do not make it big in the US.

I think at the end of the day the diversity has served as a major... that's what has determined the difference between The Roots and some of the other artists from our graduating class. I feel we followed the De La Soul, the Native Tongue blueprint.

I have tons of jazz records: John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis. I could go on and on.

I think that there will always be artists out there who think they need to sign a major label deal in order to be successful. And that machine is what is going to work for them - there's tons of examples of pop stars who need that machine.

I really really love Atlanta. There are tons of amazing artists.

People who aren't known for being artists do come in for criticism when they exhibit pictures. Paul McCartney, Tony Curtis, Mo Mowlam's husband are all at it - and what's to stop them? In my case, I don't see the comedy and the art as separate at all - you're just bending your creativity in a different direction.

I'm very grateful for the other bands and artists that stood up for us with a view to our induction - that's nice of them. But I wish that the Hall Of Fame had had the discretion to ask us first. It's now become a debate in which we are too late to have the final word.

I've seen too many people who have been artists for a long time, on that cycle of record-promote-tour, and you look up and 10 years of your life is gone. I didn't want that to happen to me.

I feel like it took artists like Pimp C and Andre 3000 with 'International Players Anthem' - I feel like it took the Memphis sound to a certain peak but it never really broke into the mainstream.

As much as people are griping about the Internet taking sales away from artists, it's been a huge promotional tool for me.

When Photoshop came around, I thought I'd died and went to heaven. When I hear artists say, 'Oh, the good old days' or 'I'm old school,' I just want to puke. There's no tool I won't use.

Recorded music is more a marketing tool than a revenue source.

We have the insight and the tools to identify and bring to fruition the dormant talent that our artists possess. Favored Nations will be branded as the home base for inspired musical talent.

As I got a little older, I discovered Lori McKenna and Patty Griffin and found out how many other tools we have as songwriters, that there's storytelling and there's ear candy, and that there is a place where they meet, too, and both of those women are really good at doing that.

My parents raised me on Spooky Tooth and The Band, Derek and the Dominoes, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, all that stuff. Rock n' roll was just in my subconscious.

I think the real problem is that nobody buys albums anymore, so you don't get the depth of the artists that are out today. What you get is whatever they felt is politically correct to get on there and actually make some impact. I think that's where you're losing your depth. You're only getting the very top of everything. It really bothers me.

When you look at what we can call the golden era of concept albums, which starts in the mid or late '60s and ends maybe in the early '80s, it's an interesting time for music. You see all these very established and popular acts and bands and artists that were somehow on the top of their game but really trying to experiment.

Art and money are closely related. Try sitting down with a group of artists and ask them what's on their mind. Very quickly the topic shifts to money. And it can be very hard to get them off that subject.

Contemporary Swedish artists that chose Swedish as their language tended to sing about certain topics and use words I wanted to avoid.

I think you have a lot of really good artists today. You have your Beyonce, Usher, Nicki Minaj and the like. But our generation, the artists were stronger. You're talking about myself, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Roberta Flack, Gladys Knight, The Temptations, The Four Tops.

I listened to everything. To the early Motown groups - the Four Tops and the Temptations - to Johnny Mathis, Gloria Lynne - my sisters loved her. Sarah Vaughan. Everything.

For the first project I did in North America, I was asked as an artist, not as an architect, to collaborate on a big development in the heart of Toronto. I was working with other artists and was in charge of giving form to a street, and I proposed a galleria.