Our parents were musicians.
Well I'm a third-generation musician. My Grandfather's a musician and my father and mother were both musicians and so I'm a musician. It was just natural that I should be a musician 'cause I was born into the family.
In a jazz atmosphere, the audience members were so quiet and respectful of the musicians that you felt you were almost part of a meeting at a church or a temple, where everyone was completely in tune with the sermon and what the whole event was about.
I'm sure there's a subconscious 'go for it' thing with turning 50. You want to do as much as possible and there are thoughts of how little time we have on the planet. For a lot of musicians in their 50s, the best days are behind them. I'd like to try and show that there is a future.
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.
At the time, there was a great disagreement over 'The Wild and the Innocent,' and I was asked to record the entire album over again with studio musicians. And I said I wouldn't do it, and they basically said, 'Well hey, look, it's going to go in the trash can.' That's the record business, you know.
Musicians are, by and large, not the most politically savvy crew.
I wanted to make the kind of records that I heard in the discos that I danced in at that time. Funky, electronic sounds, while the musicians in the band were more rock oriented. This I suppose created the sound we know as Frankie Goes To Hollywood.
I think the best thing an artist can do is not hang out with other artists. I really dislike hanging out with musicians, for the most part, except for a few select friends, because I don't like to talk about music all the time.
For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.
How do we keep it up? Because that's what we do; we're musicians, and we love to play and make music. And with every album, we get better, and with every tour, we get better.
As I grew up, I wasn't a great buyer of albums, but I really liked 'The Jam.' I like good musicians and loved the energy of their songs.
All rock musicians are deaf... Or insensitive to mellow sounds.
The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.
I guess the majority of people who want to ban certain musicians are the ones who are so proud of everything America stands for.
When you keep the caliber of musicians very high in the band, people are going to come and go. Some of them will be people who have to try various things, it's natural.
Yes, I was on the cover of 'Vogue,' but girls on the cover of 'Vogue' are the most scared of rejection. Models are the most insecure of them all. Actually, actors and actresses are, and then musicians, and then models!
I didn't write any music at all, and then, I remember Jon Anderson being very insistent saying that there were two kinds of musicians: the ones who wrote music and the ones who didn't.
I've been around jazz and jazz musicians most of my life.
And I'm always interested when other musicians are trying to discover new worlds of sound.
As for style, there is something about the way musicians dress-they seem to be able to create their own world within their fashion alone.
And then the last album, 'Get It', was done over a shorter period of time and I started using other musicians, as opposed to playing all the instruments myself like I did on the other two.
I think most musicians do like to have a laugh.
When I'm not working, I don't mix with actors, really. I have about two or three friends from theater school, and we call each other and meet. But in the main, no. I'm more happy with musicians or horse riders or sailors.
Musicians and journalists are the canaries in the coalmine, but, eventually, as computers get more and more powerful, it will kill off all middle-class professions.
From the time I moved to San Francisco in 1967 to play with the Steve Miller Band, there was a lot of support in the music community for one cause or another, but this one was special because it was put on by people who understood where musicians' hearts are.
You had many jazz musicians who lived in the United States, who had a hard time being accepted over here and had to play in sort of these inferior type dives.
For me, great jazz records really feel like everyone in the room is playing together in a zone - and all the musicians are completely in sync with each other.
I think the musicians I play with solo do a certain thing that the musicians we play with with the Indigo Girls don't do. It's just a different thing. And it sort of steers my writing in some ways.
Music companies and buyers are not too encouraging towards independent musicians. Everyone wants to play safe and go with established names, but unless one breaks this routine, no new talent will come and survive.
The best musicians or sound-artists are people who never considered themselves to be artists or musicians.
If our history can challenge the next wave of musicians to keep moving and changing, to keep spiritually hungry and horny, that's what it's all about.
When I left Van Halen, I went in the studio and made a CD called Marching to Mars with all studio musicians. I did it immediately. With the disappointment riding on my shoulders of the breakup of the band.
If you're 100% yourself, then you're going to be different no matter what. I have this self-honesty approach as opposed to an ego that a lot of musicians put up. I can be myself, and that's just enough to stand out.
That's the thing about musicians: The priority is to create something new that's never been before. And you put your life on the line every time that you play.
Actors always want to be musicians, and musicians want to be actors.
