Musicians Quotes

I'm glad about what's happening to the music business. This last crop of people we had in the 90s, who are going away now, they didn't like music. They didn't trust musicians. They wanted something else from it.

The public is usually slow to catch on to new things, and it's important that musicians stick to their guns and not look for that instant gratification.

I am constantly being told that I have been a big influence for many people, including other musicians.

Well, remember that we were all members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.

I think that musicians should never forget about the intimacy of bringing two people together, and the aesthetic transference where you're almost vicariously involved in a romance between other people.

Since I started composing I have always worked with series of tempos, even superimposed the music of different groups of musicians, of singers, instrumentalists who play and sing in different tempos simultaneously and then meet every now and then in the same tempo.

Like family, we are tied to each other. This is what all good musicians understand.

When I heard Monk in person in 1955, he was playing with a quartet in a small club. The place was full of musicians, but there was no public at all.

When I was 17, I worked in a mentoring program in Harlem designed to improve the community. That's when I first gained an appreciation of the Harlem Renaissance, a time when African-Americans rose to prominence in American culture. For the first time, they were taken seriously as artists, musicians, writers, athletes, and as political thinkers.

There's a lot of good musicians who are unheard of. Get it down before they pass away.

I thought I had swell ideas, and wonderful musicians, but the hell of it, no one else did.

I was never worried that synthesizers would replace musicians. First of all, you have to be a musician in order to make music with a synthesizer.

Musicians always come off sounding a little bit pretentious, and a little bit... I don't know, hypocritical, from what they do, talking about strong issues.

The Civil Rights for Musicians Act is about economic justice for African American artists. It's about what's right. And it's about time.

Musicians from the beginning of time have been there to express the mood and the musical feelings in the air for whatever's going on in that particular culture. It's the greatest joy as a musician to be able to translate that, be part of something and watch the scenery around you.

People are afraid to ask musicians to be involved in projects because they anticipate being turned down. Young artists hesitate before contacting me. People in my position don't get approached often enough.

As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something that's never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.

I try not to date musicians. It's all I've dated. Every guy I've dated is a musician. Obviously, it's not working.

Well there is a lot of work here for younger and older musicians now. Our Ministry of Culture has now really embarked on changing things for artists, and it is getting much better. We just have to organize ourselves as artists, and then things will be better.

I'm glad I was born when I was. My time was the golden age of variety. If I were starting out again now, maybe things would happen for me, but it certainly would not be on a variety show with 28 musicians, 12 dancers, two major guest stars, 50 costumes a week by Bob Mackie. The networks just wouldn't spend the money today.

The musicians I respected were much older than me. I expected them to cut my head, and they did.

The best musicians or sound-artists are people who never considered themselves to be artists or musicians.

Coltrane would do what you'd get a Roland Pro Tools module to do but with a group of jazz musicians.

But between sets I'd sneak over to the black places to hear blues musicians. It got to the point where I was making my living at white clubs and having my fun at the other places.

I owe everything to the musicians I work with.

You'll almost encounter a superstition amongst musicians, people sort of go through strange rituals, what they need to do to write a song.

I believe musicians have a duty, a responsibility to reach out, to share your love or pain with others.

There were bars that began to have acoustic musicians play, it was 1970: Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, America, The Eagles, all that kind of stuff was popular. It was very easy for me to just kind of move in and be noticed.

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

Musicians are probably the most uncomfortable people in themselves in the world. Happiness, I think, only exists when you're a child and once you go past 11, unfortunately it's gone.