Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I don't generally like things that are too pedestrian. But at the same time, and if I'm in the right mood, hey - I ain't gonna lie - I listen to Joni Mitchell. I listen to 'Blue,' I listen to Miles Davis.
The music that I make is pretty sincere; it's from my heart and I love it, and what just happened is more people have started to connect with my heart, and I haven't followed some kind of marketing scheme.
Well, jazz is to me, a complete lifestyle. It's bigger than a word. It's a much bigger force than just something that you can say. It's something that you have to feel. It's something that you have to live.
I just want to say, if you're going crazy, take a break. I felt overwhelmed by stuff that wasn't satisfying me, things I was supposed to do for my career. I stopped and said, 'Let me get back to the basics.'
Reiterating the belief that HIV is the cause of AIDS is an easy thing to do. Understanding the science and politics of the situation is much more complicated and requires study with a critical and open mind.
Jeri Brown is a rare breed, who can not only produce a wonderful sound, which is expected from a singer, but can also be extremely creative and has the audacity to musically understand all that she is doing.
It's about process, the process of growth. It seems to me in my own life - and other minds throughout history have also observed this phenomenon - that growth seems to move in two directions at the same time.
There was the best teachers from the Czech Philharmonic, highly dedicated people, some of the best musicians in the world passing on the knowledge about the country, about the principles, and about the music.
An artistic endeavour comes into the world naked, unnamed, and vulnerable. Every creative effort requires the artist to wrest something from nothingness, a purposive cosmos from an apparently indifferent chaos.
I will have a song that I'm in love with for a couple of months and then I'll go to something else. That's just constantly changing. And sometimes I will go back to old one that I haven't heard for a long time.
I came back from Japanese tour a broken man to find that one of my outside productions was very high in the charts and that was Nazareth. I stepped into another career and suddenly became a well-known producer.
Be honest with yourself and the way you act when you hear music. That way, when people watch, they'll see something from your heart and soul, and as a result will communicate your feeling and thought much better.
Orchestras are not used to playing the kind of stuff jazz musicians like to play. It requires a lot of rehearsal and recording time, so it's much easier to do on a synth or sampler. So, we came up with that idea.
You don't have to be fearless to do anything; you can be scared out of your mind. I fear that I won't get better and that I won't have time to practice. To be called a 'jazz musician' - it's a big responsibility.
It (jazz) isn't like it used to be. The guys aren't together. They're all separated. Individuals now. Bird was a symbol. It was a clique, a clique of people. Who all believed in one thing: gettin' high. And playin'.
For what I can imagine and feel and think and hear, I can hardly do anything on the acoustic bass. It used to be just pure frustration of imagining so much more and being able to get to a certain level of execution.
We have been trying to play a lot of different kinds of music, and probably the next album will go back more towards the direction where you couldn't classify each song as a certain kind of music. This album you can.
This is my second bass that Paul built me. There were some changes that were made. Sometimes I think of changes that could be made having to do with both the sound and the feel. It's definitely a beautiful instrument.
Make no mistake, this music is for everyone. Jazz is not an exclusive, elite club. Go ahead, listen to your Snoop Doggy Dog, Pearl Jam, Garth Brooks, but add a little Ellington, Basie and Coltrane to your life as well.
The way that we imitate each others' riffs is something that other bands don't do as much. If we're jamming with a jazz band, or I am jamming with a jazz band, I have to catch myself, the tendency is always to do that.
Traditionally, the role of the bass player was just to keep things simple and solid, so it's really a special thing when you can get a player that can actually bring in a lot of presence and also a visual presence, too.
We have the greatest fans in the world, and our growth has been so organic. It's online; it's out at the shows. It's a big family, and they know we're going to do our best, and we know they're going to give it their best.
I went up to his [Hank Jones'] house and there were four guys there: Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and Max Roach. Not a bad place to be. Scared shitless, but a nice place to be on my second day in New York.
I love people, and I love to be with people and to make music with people, but my natural state is to revert back to being by myself in my house, which is cool because thats where I practice and write and listen and study.
To have the opportunity to bring 'Tallica Parking Lot' to life through images was really special. And also to have a lot of my heroes and my friends in the film was really, really special. People like Lemmy from Motorhead.
I love people, and I love to be with people and to make music with people, but my natural state is to revert back to being by myself in my house, which is cool because that's where I practice and write and listen and study.
On the other hand, I'm very tolerant as well. I expect that everybody can play what they want. I'm only not tolerant when it comes to myself and what is presented on my album that I have to listen to for the rest of my life.
Whenever I release a record, it's my record. It's not a selfish thought. I may work all year 'round for other people. So, finally, when I come out with my own album, it should be me with the creative help of other musicians.
There's no way we could play a country song as well as a country band or a Latin song as well as a Latin band. We could never expect to do that. We just keep doing what we do, what we know how to do. We sound like ourselves.
We wanted to do something different and have a surprise release. At first, naturally, the label was getting a little scared about that, because they wanna sell records, and a surprise release means it might not go as quickly.
Not a lot of hard rock bands are just letting it all be - they're adding a lot of samples on things, or effects or whatever - and we just wanted the drums to be raw so you could really hear what Brooks Wackerman is capable of.
I've been friends with Jaco Pastorius's son since 1996 - Johnny Pastorius, the eldest son. And I remember when I first met him, I said, 'Some day, you've gotta make a film about your father,' because his influence is so broad.
We were very proud of everything that we accomplished with 'Hail To The King,' but when it was time to write a new record, it was like, 'Well, we accomplished that. Let's see what else we can do,' and took it to the next level.
Last tour my bass rig was breaking down every other night. That was a pain. We would get on stage and Trey would count off the song, and I'd play the first note and nothing would be there. Those guys would just roll their eyes.
If there is a good musical reason, I think it might draw more attention and sell, though it is not guaranteed. To make a record without a musical reason, you have to either be a pop star who sells automatically or just be lucky.
I play in Metallica, and I have fun in Metallica. I tell you, I am the luckiest man on the planet because we have a good time and we're happy. When we put on our guitars, we're teenagers again, and that's where the fun comes in.
My son's a painter. All through school his teachers tell him he's a genius. I tell him to paint me an apple that looks like an apple before he paints me one that doesn't. Go where you can go, but start from someplace recognizable.
I'm too busy playing. When I'm playing I don't pay attention to who's listening. When I was listening I listened to symphony orchestras, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Stravinsky. You don't listen to one instrument; you listen to music.
It was also important for me to have a burning desire to achieve something worthwhile on that instrument, and I devoted many many many hours with little or no compensation to perfecting whatever I could, because I loved it so much.
There are always some doubts when you do a new album though. You wonder whether you succeeded or not, especially when you waited as long as I did for this one - seven years. You're never really sure if it will be a nice record or not.
When something in art or music piques my interest, I tend to go check it out, and most things I check out, I'm not very good at. But a few things I've gone to check out have given me back as much love as I gave them, usually much more.
It's a pity if someone who has a really profoundly potent art to share chooses not to or doesn't fit into this very thin slice of what's desirable and marketable, chances are the public will never get a chance to hear what they're doing.
My father had a friend who actually had a hollow-body bass guitar and didn't work through an amp, but because it was hollow body, I could play it. So I kind of played on that for about a year, learning scales and all that. And here I am.
Back in the day, being a young, inspired bass player, I started to gravitate toward jazz fusion. I almost would have called myself an elitist. I got to the point where, for a little bit there, I was more interested in instrumental music.
I write about things that tear me apart, and it's all very personal to me. It's funny to hear people disassemble the lyrics. If they get it wrong, it almost means more to me, because it's morphed into something that is meaningful to them.
The first album I ever bought was Santana's 'Abraxas.' Obviously, I was a huge fan of Carlos because he had the unique guitar sound, and he had incorporated a lot of the percussion and really, really fun rhythmic bass lines in there, too.
I admire anyone who can come up with something original. But not originality alone, because there can be originality in stupidity, with no musical description of any emotion or any beauty the man has seen, or any kind of life he has lived.
The great thing about Santa Monica civic auditorium was it was a place you could ride your bike to. In this case, my dad dropped me and my friends off, and we'd go see Ronnie James Dio or Jean-Luc Ponty or Weather Report or the Pretenders.
The importance of first-week sales has kind of diminished, in our opinion, in the industry, and we don't really know what it really means anymore. It is what it is in the industry. And for us, it's all about the endgame, not where it begins.
It's a pity that if someone who has a really profoundly potent art to share chooses not to or doesn't fit into this very thin slice of what's desirable and marketable, chances are the public will never get a chance to hear what they're doing.