English Musician Quotations

We humans are the greatest of earth's parasites.

We have such a high drop-out rate from musicians, said the head of the college. He was right - I dropped out before I even dropped in. Months later they were still asking what had happened to me, not realising that I was on a UK tour.

I would love to do top of pops as a grandma.

We'd played for years to half-empty clubs in England.

In fact it's quite gratifying for me to see some of the people who really objected to this method of working now being quite so profligate in their use of it.

Rome had Senators too, that's why it declined.

Every night is a joy; you get an hour and a half of all these hits. It's a lot of fun.

A good teacher must know the rules; a good pupil, the exceptions.

In the morning on Sunday, a drum is sounded at about 8 o'clock.

And I came back and it was great, 'cuz George had set up all these flowers all over the studio saying welcome home. So then we got it together again. I always felt it was better on the White one for me. We were more like a band, you know.

It's very questionable, and we will pursue every factor, every element, every second of the timeline, of the final hours of Maurice's life. We will pursue that relentlessly. That will be our quest from now on.

Paul and I don't see that much of each other these days, but I certainly still regard him as a friend.

He was like a real dad, you know. We used to sit down with guitars and mess around.

Still, we view that old material very much like we view the new material so if this gives us a chance to go out and promote it then, yes we will go out and do that.

The other thing I felt was that the philosophical concept behind the experiences also looked like it had been designed by technicians and not by entertainers. I felt I needed to grab hold of it and try and push the envelope as much as I possibly could right now.

A doctor must work eighteen hours a day and seven days a week. If you cannot console yourself to this, get out of the profession.

I think hopefully we've got enough brain cells left to decide if our music is really worth something.

It's not like my old self - I'm not in character anymore, I'm me. I'm not hiding behind that anymore.

Nobody will ever take Maurice's place, and he'll go on with us and he'll go on our music. He'll go on with us as the Bee Gees, and Maurice will always be with us.

It's almost like, it's often the bad recording quality of things which makes them interesting.

The Bee Gees, to us, was the three brothers. In Maurice's name, we would respect that and not be the Bee Gees anymore.

I am still working with music, but Gordon and I no longer perform together.

I'll die before I'm 25, and when I do I'll have lived the way I wanted to.

He wasn't a great father. He was a great musician. That's always been a touchy one, and it will be until I can find the answer, but I don't know if there is one.

You must learn to talk clearly. The jargon of scientific terminology which rolls off your tongues is mental garbage.

Two weeks later, we played our first concert and had 100 people there. It was pretty cool.

For me, playing is about playing with other people.

I'll prove in only seven days that I can make you a new man.

The practice of medicine is a thinker's art the practice of surgery a plumber's.

We're also passionate about music and very critical about the music that we listen to.

Well, we have this place in Telluride, Colorado. It's somewhere I can just get away and relax and think.

I'm the eldest at 51, and if the Stones can drag themselves around once more, then there's a few more albums in us.

Anyway, it's good to be sent back to the underground. There's always a good side to bad things and the good side to this is that at least everyone has to go back down.

Ironically I think this is what sparked my interest in and passion for the NOAH, which is capable of creating all these old weird and wonderful sounds.

I am financing the recording myself. So I have no big names to drop.

As soon as it sounds fine, I'm on to the next thing, man.

We had to leave Australia to become international stars.

Well, for the reasons I mention above, although I am not sure the live shows were really so brilliant - but nobody could hear much so perhaps it did not matter! It was certainly a very exciting time for us all.

Just the actual physics of putting it all together, you know, the latter period is actually quite fragmented in terms of the licenses and all those things so it makes a compilation of the full twenty years really a technical minefield.

Diagnosis is not the end, but the beginning of practice.

The first time we all played as a band, I think it was in January 1998, in Jonny's bedroom.

Sure I'm leaving the Bee Gees. I'm going into films.

I mean, I could just go round and use session musicians for every song, but I don't find that helps when it comes to setting up a band for live. Derrick has been with me for donkey's years.

Stealing things is a glorious occupations, particularly in the art world.

Whenever I have a bad day I just think of these people.

We were very influenced by The Beatles, no question.

The hardware manufacturers, game designers, cable companies and computer companies and, in fact, film studios are going to ensure that this thing marches on. They know that they are going to make an enormous amount of money from it.

I've always liked the effect of having somebody in there who hadn't the faintest idea what was going on.

What I like about playing America is you can be pretty sure you're not going to get hit with a full can of beer when you're singing and I really enjoy that!

Well, I think that it is complicated in that the first four albums were all with Universal so they have the rights to that and therefore it is a lot easier for them to do that period.

I find that most men would rather have their bellies opened for five hundred dollars than have a tooth pulled for five.

I'd never try to be that distinctive from the Bee Gees' sound. I'm very proud of being a Bee Gee and am always aware that I'll be identified as a Bee Gee.

Research has been called good business, a necessity, a gamble, a game. It is none of these - it's a state of mind.

I think for anybody, any family, and I know there are families out there that are going through this even now, that it is the hardest thing in the world. Nobody is ever prepared for it.

You grow and learn a lot about the industry and what happens behind closed doors over the years.

However long the song is was how long it took us to write it.

Then I have a head mounted display which actually was designed for the military to do synchronized building entries and that's looking down at my hands, so projected on the big screen behind me, you can see my hands as I'm putting the tracks together.

Facts are not science - as the dictionary is not literature.

I hope we can keep doing it this way - making music and art that are pure products of our influences while not really having to let the whole celebrity side of it get in the way. Then maybe more virtual bands will come out and do the same thing.

In the beginning, Barry and I couldn't decide if we were going got go forward with the name of the Bee Gees or just as Barry and Robin. Now we've decided to continue as the Bee Gees because we feel we can, and Maurice would have wanted it.

Don't despise empiric truth. Lots of things work in practice for which the laboratory has never found proof.

When we parted I had written everything for the group. My leaving sort of evened things out within the group.

People want performers, personality and drama, and you got that in the .

The great doctors all got their education off dirt pavements and poverty - not marble floors and foundations.

It's totally produced now. It's almost like a conveyor belt of what metal's supposed to be like these days. It's not music to me.

When a man lacks mental balance in pneumonia he is said to be delirious. When he lacks mental balance without the pneumonia, he is pronounced insane by all smart doctors.

We were into Hendrix and Cream, who were like the heaviest bands around at that time. We just wanted to be heavier than everybody else!

An actor is a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, he ain't listening.

Here's good advice for practice: go into partnership with nature; she does more than half the work and asks none of the fee.

I am taking a break, but not a huge break because the Maiden record is actually happening right now, and I am recording it as we speak, well not right as we speak, but close.

I'm celebrating my 40th year in show business this year.

I am a raging alcoholic and a raging addict and I didn't want to see my kids do the same thing.

A man who cannot work without his hypodermic needle is a poor doctor. The amount of narcotic you use is inversely proportional to your skill.

It seems like the older bands are bigger than ever. We get a mixed crowd where you have kids and old blokes like me.

After working with Ligeti I began to hear Brahms and Beethoven differently.

With all the highs and lows I've had in my life, I wouldn't change anything. So no, I don't, this is what I'm supposed to be doing.

None of the great discoveries was made by a 'specialist' or a 'researcher'.

The other thing that was very noticeable on that tour, not so much in the video, was the new young element that were coming to our shows... I started to see some very young people in the audience... maybe 14, 15, 16 years old.

I love Sell Out, I think it's great. I love the jingles. The whole thing as an album is a wonderful piece of work. The cover. Everything about it. It's got humor, great songs, irony.

Well, for the My Generation album, there was nothing to be nervous about in them days. We used to take every day as it came. Every day was just a gig and I think we did the recording between gigs literally.

He was the average guy. Maurice, I think, reflected every man.

What's the point of re-releasing an album? The original sounded good, why change something about it?

My own nature hovers between neurotic and paranoid. I've developed the habit of mentally listing things that make me optimistic about the future. I do it every day.

Maurice would prance into a room, you know, and his presence was immediate.

Our parents came home one day and heard us, and they thought it was the radio, but our grandfather told them it was us.

Well, it's a nice quiet time for Iron Maiden, and I'll be releasing a new solo album next year, so this is a really good time for the managing out my solo career, which is quite well.

There are a lot of stuff on the record that I am thinking is generic but actually it is just as good as everybody else who is putting stuff out at the time.

Unfortunately I was in New York when 9/11 happened.

Like any parents, mine wanted me to have a secure job with a regular wage and career prospects. And the one job my father knew of, that he'd had experience of himself, was the army, so he could help me in that direction.

So, if we're happy playing the songs we have written, for as long as we can, then that is sort of the proof that they're good songs as well.

Monterey, I remember, but I seem to remember the Fillmore West, that we played the week before Monterey. That was much more memorable for me. The first time in San Francisco. They were good gigs.

Polydor used to release me at different times around the world. You get your royalty statement: sales here, here, but never over there!

I got married in 1973, and my career was really at its peak between 1975, and '81-'82. Everything I put out could do no wrong. Like you can't imagine.

I didn't write those songs, but I can relate to every one of them... I have.

I'd just like to prove to myself that I'm all here and all together and can get the best out of myself. I'd also like to prove that to a couple of other people.

I am responsible for making sure that all of the church members live a godly life, and if they do not, I am in charge of their discipline.

I love 5.1. Sometimes you can't squeeze everything in comfortably into a stereo picture. There is a lot more space in a 5.1 environment.

I can't endorse Napster because I'm a professional musician, but Napster did give me the idea that I can give something back to my supporters.

I found that you couldn't use the same people anyway; there weren't that many people, so you'd be using the same ones over and over again.

I don't think it is any different from what it was, except that the method is now familiar so you can't set up some internal shock situation.