I write a song to be recorded. And to some extent to be performed, but definitely more to be recorded than performed, because the recording will last longer than a performance.
I hadn't been a recording artist all that long when albums came on the scene, and I was one of the first singers to point the way to how varied an album's contents could be.
I always wanted to be a full-time musician. Every television job I had was a means to buy a grand piano, or to put in a recording studio, or something like that.
Yes, alas, I've been on some recording sessions where the music wasn't good. Not so many, really, considering how many I've done. It's a very awkward situation because to do a recording well you focus on the positive of what will make the piece better.
Writing the songs and producing the songs and arranging them and recording them is your canvas and your palette and your brush.
I've got the recording process down, and I can knock it out very quickly.
I've never been ambitious about recording.
Whenever I can squeeze it in, I'm writing and recording.
We stuck the record head so it kept on recording over and over on top of itself and played keyboard notes into it to create this ghost repetition melody.
I felt that, in retrospect, there was a time in the late Seventies, after I had a string of hits and successes, as a performer and a recording artist, that I wasn't saying anything.
I'm very attached to Paris because I have a base there and am also recording there, but New York is home to me when I'm in the U.S., because it's nice to have a bed to go back to.
I see no reason for recording the obvious.
It's been over 15 years since I toured... over 12 years since I did any recording under my own name. I never really intended to take that long of a hiatus.
Modern recording has made it so that people can spend forever taking shortcuts and making everything uniform, but that strips music of what makes it exciting.
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.
Through the years I've found that I prefer live playing to recording. I still do lots of recording - but I treasure the live shows.
Hollywood and the recording industry argue that current law permits the copying of songs and movies, and sharing them on the Internet. This enables young people to grow up learning how to steal.
I was working two landscaping jobs; I was recording songs in the spare bedroom. I would get up at 4 A.M., go to work, get back at 6 P.M., have nap, then start recording, just go until I fell asleep.
I was successful with mediocre material because of a good recording voice that people really liked at that time.
When I have had such men before my camera my whole soul has endeavored to do its duty towards them in recording faithfully the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man. The photograph thus taken has been almost the embodiment of a prayer.
Today's recording techniques would have been regarded as science fiction forty years ago.
When I was a kid, I wanted to emulate Mel Blanc, who is arguably one of the most legendary voiceover recording artists of our time. I used to watch all the cartoons where he would voice Daffy, Elmer Fudd and Porky the Pig. I knew one day I wanted to do that.
They wanted to start recording rock 'n roll, and thought I had the right voice.
I did my first recording. It was called The Champ.
Nothing could be recorded in those days except by aiming a movie camera at the television screen. It was at least another 10 years before they had any kind of recording medium.
I learned so much about recording and about singing on records from Ken Nelson.
The White House tapes, recording Nixon's nefarious doings from Watergate to the bombing of Vietnam, made frightening reading once made public on the orders of Congress.
I've learned that I work best when I'm entirely naked. The recording process was done that way.
One thing I'm doing on the new Titanic recording is actually bringing in different acoustic spaces.
I've been thinking of trying my hand at rap. I've been recording snippets on my BlackBerry.
Nowadays, it's like two different arenas, recording and touring. When I started way back in the day, doing both was nothing, you didn't have to think about it, the road and recording.
The Hadley Street Dream is a tribute to making a vision come to life. My father built a compound on a dessert city block, he saw something in that space we couldn't see. It was years later the album was born right there on Hadley St. He built the studio I started recording the album at.
For the most part, the real work is done in the songwriting stage and recording; the next step is presenting to people.
Waylon Jennings and I had a lot of fun recording together.
I put out a recording of me singing mostly jazz because I wanted people to know I'm coming from a jazz background.
I knew absolutely nothing about recording. I had this four-track recorder, and I'd plug my electric guitar right into it, which sounded real bad. I moved any fader that made a drastic change in sound. I thought that was cool - that it was communicating something. I didn't have the skills to do anything subtle. It was just like screaming.
