Musician Quotations | Page 2

Being a professional musician doesn't mean you spend 12 hours a day playing music. It means you spend up to 12 hours a day taking care of business, dealing with litigation, with the various characters who've stolen your interests, or fending off hostile lawsuits from former members of the band.

Being a musician is a job - it is just a really fun one!

I grew up in a farm town in Indiana. In the early years I played by myself, because there were no other musicians around.

The thing with me. I can't stick musicians. I've thought about this. I can't stand them, and being stuck in a studio with them I think that's my strength I can hear what they can't.

There's a lot of variety of musicians in Korea. I cannot say they are the best in the world, but I can say that Korean artists are really dynamic artists, so I am going to show that from now on.

I've sort of had an investigatory relationship with being a musician. I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I felt I had had my run - I had done Jane's and I wasn't particularly interested in music anymore.

I have never imagined doing anything other than football, but now, thinking about it coldly, if I hadn't been a footballer, I would have been a musician.

No one else in our family was a professional musician so this took an enormous leap of faith on their part.

It sounds kind of stupid, but I've never not wanted to be a musician. It's been inside me since I was little so I don't know what else I would do.

I always want to set myself a challenge by doing something no-one would expect me to do! But, having said that, I don't feel as a musician you can steer too far away from what you normally do.

The Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame will provide a center where the lives and the artistry of the greatest jazz musicians will be celebrated, and where people will come to learn about jazz, something to which my brother devoted his lifes work.

I was born in Swansea in the Principality of Wales in September 1934 and named Clive William John Granger. The 'William John' names were traditional Granger boy's names, and my mother liked the name Clive because some popular musician at the time had it.

What you learn from working with other performers and musicians is invaluable, really, and can only help you grow. I mean, if you spend your whole life focusing on yourself, you're not really learning much.

When it comes to musicians, I'm like the daddy of musicians here in Cuba.

I don't have to compete in the charts. I can just be myself as a musician, a songwriter and play with the musicians that I really love.

I'm so proud that my offspring became a musician. I'm full of awe that we are able to have a whole family live the life of artists.

We're not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour.

If I was to meet Lou Reed or Bob Dylan, I would be totally helpless. Writers and musicians make me feel completely starstruck.

I'm a musician. It's what I do! I wouldn't be too good at anything else.

I've always thought about myself as somewhat of a folk musician. I just write words.

I'm fascinated by musicians who don't completely understand their territory; that's when you do your best work.

Sometimes being a musician has little to do with viability and everything to do with survivability. Many musicians start out great, and they wind up out of the business in 10 years.

I think you could go back to any filmmaker or musician or artist, and look at what their input was in their formative years, and you could trace all the lines.

I really didn't intend to be a musician when I left Japan.

I know of musicians who have played together for decades who hate each other. The Modern Jazz Quartet for one.

I love the power of the musician who composes and performs. I envy their ability to put a nugget of truth in three minutes of sweat and emotional outpouring, colored entirely from their thoughts.

I feel very honored to be playing with Bill Pierce. He's such a great musician.

First, it doesn't surprise me that traditional music has experienced a kind of exhaustion in the 20th century - not forgetting that many musicians started to look outside the traditional structures of tonality.

I'd rather be just a Korean musician as opposed to, you know, a K-Pop musician.

I'm an engineer. I see myself as a toolmaker and the musicians are my customers... They use my tools.

The Internet has definitely opened doors and leveled the playing field for musicians.

If you are a musician and you don't show any interest on the business level then you are actually vulnerable and people will rip you off. They will sweet talk you into anything.

I write and play music. I'd like to be a musician at some point.

For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.

I also had a brother who was like me a musician and a composer. A man of great talent, far more gifted than I. He died very young... he killed himself in the prime of his life.

And I'm always interested when other musicians are trying to discover new worlds of sound.

In some ways Lester Young is the most complex rhythmically of any musician. He does some things which are just phenomenal.

I have always been a person who is concerned with the dignity of jazz music and the way jazz musicians have been treated and are treated, and the fact that the music has not been given the kind of due that it deserves.

I just love to play and I get a chance to play with other musicians and I jump on it.

My wife, Gayle, is a wonderful musician and singer. We share music, so it's a deep bond.

One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else.

But I really do have a soft spot for the solo shows. Any musician who writes and sings will tell you thats the center of it, that is it. Its almost like theres something church-like about it and you gotta go back there, if youre a songwriter that sings your material.

I cut myself off from the mainstream of jazz. It stood me in good stead later on, as a musician.

I became a musician because I love music, and that is what has sustained me; it's not because I thought it was a great way to make a living. Music saved my life.

I'm not a deaf musician. I'm a musician who happens to be deaf.

I don't think any musician ever thinks about making a statement. I think everybody goes into music loving it.

I've always thought that actors wanted to be pop musicians and pop musicians wanted to be actors.

I lived in an area where there were a lot of rock musicians, and we got together regularly in our studios.

I always loved the look of musicians. I've always admired them because they have a look - when I was growing up, it seemed that the ones I liked didn't need to have a stylist.

I don't try to make 15 musicians sound like two each.

Every musician tries to blend in some reggae. It's the only music that brings all people together, different races, different religions.

You gotta pick yourself up. Sometimes you just gotta do it over and over, but you gotta do it. You can't give up. I wouldn't give up. I didn't give up - or doubt myself - in becoming a successful musician with a successful band.

Musicians are always gigging and never have a chance to stop for a minute.

You know, when you're an actor, you want to go to Hollywood. When you're a musician, you want to go to Nashville.

I have daughters who are writers and actors but no musicians.

I only choose musicians who I think will emerge, can emerge, with their own character, while still going along with the tune in question.

I love the life of a musician but I live the life of a bodybuilder.

The fact I had my father as an adversary was such a powerful tool to work with. I subconsciously fought him to the degree that I drove me to be one of the most successful musician in the world.

I don't listen to music, actually. Obviously I go to clubs; I stand in elevators; a lot of my friends are musicians; I hear music all the time. But I don't have my own collection of music.

You can never learn it all and I hope to continue my growth as a person and a musician

I think most musicians do like to have a laugh.

I prefer to think of myself as a musician who is still learning and trying to do something every time out.

I think musicians should stay off television generally.

My life as a professional musician is a joyless exercise in futility.

I've dated a couple of guys who were awesome, and the celebrity part of my life and the traveling part are hard to get around. You never get to see each other, especially if you're both musicians.

It's funny to find there are still people around who think if a musician has schooling, it automatically makes him a lesser jazz player. But you don't learn jazz in school.

If a musician dares to get out of the box he's been put in, people get confused. They want people where they can find them! I am fortunate in some respects as I've always been known as someone who 'moves around' and tries different things. But generally, we are supposed to stay where we're put.

I love Philip Glass' work, not only as a film composer but also as a musician. The film score work that he does always amazes and shocks me.

There is one thing that freezes a musician more than the deadliest physical cold, and that is the spiritual chill of an unresponsive audience!

I am not, and have no interest in being, a musician of any kind.

I really wanted to be a musician, but it turned out I had no sense of time.

I did a concert... in September with the Berlin Philharmonic... They're great musicians, and there's always something to learn from them.

As a musician, I hear the harmonic value of everything - I just enjoy music.

I'm always going to get more of a charge playing Chicago than I will Duluth or some place like that. Just because of the history and the people there are way more knowledgeable than a lot of other cities. It's an amazing music scene with some great bands and great musicians.

If we perform the romantic repertoire we need more musicians.

I think of myself as a musician and not a celebrity. Celebrity status is something you have to deliberately pursue - I couldn't imagine myself seeking that.

There's a reason I moved to NYC, and if I listed all the musicians on my list you'd grow weary.

I owe everything to the musicians I work with.

There is no scientific discoverer, no poet, no painter, no musician, who will not tell you that he found ready made his discovery or poem or picture — that it came to him from outside, and that he did not consciously create it from within.

I was always funny, but I wasn't a great musician, and I wanted to be a musician way more than I wanted to be a comic. I just didn't think comedians were cool when I was a kid.

My dad wasn't the biggest role model, but he was a great musician and I loved him very much. He was a character.

THE GODS was my first professional band and I learned a lot during that time. It was very cool playing with so many great musicians as it helped me to learn.

What I look for in musicians is a sense of infinity

I have always felt I was more accurately a Hard Rock musician.

Combing my hair doesn't make me a better musician.

I think one of the great things about being a musician is that you never stop learning.

My father used to tell me about how musicians don't have respect from people and he was afraid about my future.

From childhood, I have been more of a musician than a singer. People close to me know how much effort I put into practising. Even when I am travelling, I have my tanpura on my iPhone.

Billy Joel is an incredible musician. He just feels like one of the guys, you know. I grew up listening to his music.

The worst thing about the life of a jazz musician on the road is getting to the gig. Once you're there and playing, it's marvelous.

And I think musicians can better run this state than politicians. And, hell, beauticians can better run the state than politicians.

When I want 30 musicians in the orchestra, I get 30.

I love being a musician. I love the lifestyle. But I think it's probably as difficult and frustrating as anything.

The one mentality I've always tried to have is that no matter what stage in your career that you are in as a musician or a performer or a songwriter or whatever, there's always more to learn.

I think one of the reasons I've had success in hip-hop is that I can bring out vulnerability in people who are generally seen as tough guys. To me, when a hip-hop musician always plays tough, I find it annoying because I know they're not really like that - there's something deeper and vulnerable. There has to be, because they're human beings.

My job of being a musician in a recording studio has nothing to do with being a musician being on tour performing.

As a musician, I know that it'll take time for me to get to the ranks of an established artiste. Nevertheless, I'm very happy that people are appreciating my music.

There have been many great musicians that, Clifford Brown is one great example, I mean he died very early, 25.

I've worked with some great orchestras and amazing classical musicians, but I don't like the conceptualization of classical music as an elitist form of art.

I think that what trips up a lot of great musicians is that they become involved with too many things that aren't where their strengths lie.