Music is by no means something I was like, 'I'm going to make a career out of this!' It's the only thing I know how to do, so it was more like, 'I hope to God I can make a career out of this!'
I love entertaining people, I love playing music, and I love rocking like an animal. But at a certain point, you're playing gig after gig after gig, in town after town after town, and you're lying down, staring at another hotel-room ceiling, and it's like, 'I want to be home. I'm a dad. I've got kids.'
When I was 17 or 18 and it was time to figure out what to do with my life, I realized that I didn't enjoy anything as much as I enjoyed playing music. I felt that I had no choice: that I had to become a musician.
I am terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music will be put on records forever.
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 had a hard time when I came back to Sweden and started school, because I looked different. And we moved to a really small town on the west coast of Sweden, and there were no brown people around. It didn't really get any better until I started music school at about 10 years old.
As a firm believer in the power of songwriting, I feel privileged to be part of a team that continues to help us all understand the true force and impact of lyrics and music around the world. Genius is special - it's remixing the digital playbook and owning a new space in music and tech.
I love live music and I love to see people's faces when I'm performing.
I believe honesty comes across in music because for people that music isn't just something to dance to. For people for whom music is something that they feel, they understand what I'm talking about.
That's a beautiful thing. The more successful you are, the more people are going to come and be a part of music.
Acting kind of pays my bills more than music does.
The Monkees was a straight sitcom, we used the same plots that were on the other situation comedies at the time. So the music wasn't threatening, we weren't threatening.
The calm mind allows one to connect with the inner self, the Soul, the very source of our being. That's where the music lives. That's where my music comes from.
Scriabin, as you know, is a mystic composer. His music is supersensuous, superromantic, and supermysterious. Everything is super; it is all a little overboard. Anyway, my parents were pleased that I played for him.
I want to be the Denzel of acting and the Michael Jackson of music.
Like most kids growing up, I had a very wide interest. I was interested in everything. I tried to take advantage of everything, from the sciences to music to writing to literature.
If you want to be a rock star or just be famous, then run down the street naked, you'll make the news or something. But if you want music to be your livelihood, then play, play, play and play! And eventually you'll get to where you want to be.
I think that's the problem in a lot of music. We've got these record labels.
I don't find music being less important than, like, politics.
I remember times when the whole music scene was just flourishing.
One motivation for the 'Soul Train' awards was the grumbling that all of us in the industry have heard about the way black music tends to be viewed as a secondary phenomenon by the other awards shows.
I grew up with all kinds ofmusic, but my heart was particularly drawn to Country Music because of the guitar playing, the lyrics and of artists like Steve Warner and Vince Gill.
With electronic music, you are not confined to the acoustics of a concert-hall, and that inspired me to bring my performances outdoors.
Last year in Germany at a town hall in Leipzig there was a game music concert played by the orchestra and some of the Final Fantasy scores were played. This year there is another concert scheduled in the same location, for game music.
Well when I was young, when I was very young, when I was a little boy I don't remember the music I heard, but there was an article in the Brooklyn Daily written by my Aunt about how I could choose phonograph records.
Billie Holiday I never met, but I love her music.
I had never done TV. I think it's a foolish medium for, most rock 'n roll music. Nobody ever comes off well on TV.
The blessing of being able to write music and let music speak for itself is you let the melodies and let the lyrics and the groove talk to people instead of me talking to people.
I have one piece of music, since 1997, and I don't see it having lyrics. Where does it go in this world? So I haven't recorded it.
I'd been making music that was intended to be like painting, in the sense that it's environmental, without the customary narrative and episodic quality that music normally has. I called this 'ambient music.' But at the same time I was trying to make visual art become more like music, in that it changed the way that music changes.
Music fills the infinite between two souls.
I always hated how I looked on camera. I never put a face to my music, which actually made the music that much more mysterious.
Music really transcends languages, and it means so much.
That's absolutely one of my main goals, to have a number one on Billboard. That's a big thing for me. That means people are buying and listening to your music.
Independent artists and labels have always been the trend setters in music and the music business.
Most of my career has been about standing on a stage performing music to an audience, and once the show is over, they go home and I go on to the next show.
