Tunes Quotes

I have been tied up with music for about as long as I can remember. By the time I was four I was picking out little tunes my mother played on the reed organ in the living-room.

This is an album of songs that I've always loved, tunes that I heard. For the first time in 53 years of recording, I really had control over an entire album, start to finish.

Most people remember me for a couple of tunes.

I like minor tunes.

If you try to do that in pop music - to play only rare show tunes, for example - people don't come.

When I found the music of Monk I finally found music that fit that horn. Every one of his tunes fit it perfectly.

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

I know only two tunes: one of them is "Yankee Doodle," and the other isn't.

I suppose, counting back, if the Beatles had been influenced by music in the same length of time ago - you'd have to put that into better English for me, thank you - they would have been like a banjo orchestra. They would have been doing show tunes.

Look, I was only given a year or two to come up with tunes for this record, and when all but eight of them were thrown out for riotous behaviour, I got a bit ticked off; wouldn't you?

I think every band is a little cautious when the drummer starts to write tunes.

I've heard some tunes in recent years that were pretty close to that same idea. The idea was you turn on the radio and you want to hear some music and up comes a commercial.

It is not a mystical thing, however, it is obvious and practical and I think that what the performer does is to try to get to that point with every choice you make from the phrasing in a tune to the choice of tunes.

I'll sit around and play my guitar; that's how I write tunes.

Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.

I mean, I don't think I would call Claus to do an album of big band tunes. You know, just like arrangers write for the artist they have in mind; you have to keep in mind if you're going to work with Claus Ogerman. You invite him to do what he does.

When I was working with David Cassidy at the Rio, I made an album of updated versions of some 1970s disco tunes. I had a blast.

If you play the very subtle jazz tunes with acoustic pianos, acoustic bass and it's a dead standard, you are going to play very differently. It depends on the music.

I think my iTunes is a kind of strange and embarrassing mix of show tunes and artists that I have no perception of whether or not they're huge or not, you know? I'm the kind of person who doesn't realize that The Arcade Fire is a big deal, but then I expect everybody to know Cocoon, and people tend to not know Cocoon.

Right now, I'm thinking in terms of just having a good band, man. Having a good act for the stage. Being a good performer, you know? Connected to that is future recordings, and future tunes, that kind of stuff.

Mel Blanc is a hero because of what he could do with his voice for all the Looney Tunes, the Warner Brothers cartoons, to be the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig.

I do catch myself driving around singing tunes, but I don't know if it's necessarily show tunes.

I think PSP is going to be the most successful handheld entertainment device ever. What it will do in terms of the versatility, obviously you can download music to it, and you'll be able to enjoy all your great tunes on it.

The American public tunes in every night hoping to see two people screwing. Obviously, we can't give them that but let's always keep it in mind.

I had given up the guitar between '75 and '78. I completely lost interest. I was sick of hearing other guitar players and I was tired of my tunes.

He is not in the least arrogant. The last album was written in a room in Sussex. He was like a mad professor, spending all day writing and then coming out with brilliant tunes.

From the time I could play the piano, I remember trying to write tunes. They were in my head, and I would just sit down and start noodling. Next thing I knew, I had written a melody.

Why should the Devil have all the good tunes?

For a songwriter, you don't really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they're made of, and wonder if you can make one, too.

I do very few standards. Hardly any. Other people's tunes that I do are usually obscure tunes, for the most part, although I do a couple of Duke Ellington tunes that are well known.