When punk rock came along, the one thing you were not supposed to be was musical.
My musical tastes change every week.
I specifically remember doing the musical 'Sweet Charity' at Stagedoor. I was playing Vittorio Vidal, which is a very funny part, and some other small roles. I couldn't really sing that well, but there were so many fun bits, and I just remember the tremendous adrenaline rush I felt from being onstage and hearing the audience enjoying it.
Soul has no musical geographical or racial boundaries.
I think words operate like musical notes that the eyeball hears.
I'd like to say I'm R&B's savior. Whether that's the truth or not, I'm definitely going out there with my mic and my shield to declare, 'I am here to save R&B.' I will have the people saying, 'Sir, there is a man at the musical gates saying he is here to save R&B.'
I'm proud of the fact that I've taken a lot of big directors, such as Trevor Nunn and Nick Hytner, who were musical virgins, and introduced them to the form.
Working with people, the musical part is one thing but the personal part is totally different and just as critical. If the friendship is there and it's a lasting friendship, then it will take care of itself.
I'm a hybrid-genre person, which a lot of people find confusing. I grew up listening to American country music and rock n' roll made between 1955 and 1959. The Everly Brothers and Chuck Berry were my first musical loves and are still what I am most moved by. Roy Orbison came a little bit later.
I have always been intrigued with singing and I actually started my career in musical comedies.
When I used to do musical theatre, my dad refused to come backstage. He never wanted to see the props up close or the sets up close. He didn't want to see the magic.
You know, and it really doesn't have a lot to do with the movie. That's the trick to doing a good musical is that, if you take that music number out, there's less to the movie there. You would miss it.
I'm always working out; I did ice hockey in high school, but I'm not a dance person. I mean, this was horrible, but I had a dance double in my high-school musical.
I'm not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down.
I know about lots of things that have nothing to do with being Asian, that you would never guess from looking at me. I know all about musical theater. I could go on 'Jeopardy!' and knock off the whole Broadway show tunes category. Also the whole Bible stories category.
I mean, I did a film, a musical of 'Scrooge', in '70, and the tricks were done by flat clothes and mirrors. I hope that the day will come when we don't have to turn up at all.
I'm making my Broadway musical debut at the age of 73 - it's a kind of interesting career arc.
I'd rather have a hundred thousand or a million people saying I'm nuts and I'm crazy for my musical choices and what I've said lyrically, than a million people all raising their hand on the first day.
The Lounge Lizards were relating with a tradition and it was like I was playing within a musical context. The guitar playing stood out as being different in some way. That was a real education for me.
I've always been really artistic. I went to an all-girls private Catholic school, and one of their biggest things was musical theater.
I came from a really musical family. I studied classical piano because my grandparents were piano teachers, but started doing musical theater at age nine in Fresno, California, and went to a performing arts high school. That was my life.
The way I look at it, they're all part of my musical diary, and I can listen to any one of them and it will bring up memories of what was going on at that time.
My favorite musical? I don't. It changes all the time. I'm just a diehard, I'm totally old school, like I'll sit and watch, if they are re-doing Oklahoma in New York, I will be the first one there.
When I was younger, I had a much better connection between words and music. Somewhere along the way, I had kind of an aspiration to disconnect them, to just kind of go into a totally musical world.
I've never really been a confident person, except from a musical standpoint. I had to push myself early on, but it got easier with each gig.
I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences.
This is now the way our culture prioritises. Look up 'Steppenwolf,' and you'll get the band before the novel. Look up Jesus Christ, and you'll get the musical. Look up Princess Link-a-din and you'll get LinkedIn, the business-oriented social network.
Genius is a word too often tossed around in musical circles.
I'm naturally going to react to that and he'll bring out elements in my musical character that were lying dormant, because I'm relating what he's playing.
Lyric poetry is, of course, musical in origin. I do know that what happened to poetry in the twentieth century was that it began to be written for the page. When it's a question of typography, why not? Poets have done beautiful things with typography - Apollinaire's 'Calligrammes,' that sort of thing.
In my mid 30's, after a decade or so of giving full time to the music thing and finding myself with about $10 in the bank and no assets other than my musical equipment, I realized I needed to get serious about making a living.
We went for the best overall feel on each song. There are no musical overdubs at all. It's a true live record; it's one of the few true live records out there.
There are a lot of actors who wish there was a next play, a next musical. As an actor, I guess that's all I can wish for - the next role, the next opportunity.
Silence is more musical than any song.
Jazz is a very democratic musical form. It comes out of a communal experience. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.
But I mean, again, Zappa's far more musical than the Bonzos ever were.
