I was playing 'The Flight of the Bumblebee,' and I totally forgot the ending, so I performed the whole piece again, and I still couldn't remember it.
In the early days of jazz, it was ensemble music: everybody playing all together. Nobody really stood out.
A close girlfriend of mine and I have been writing and playing together for years and decided to make it official, so we formed a band called 'Everly.'
Since I retired, I very much enjoy watching Serena Williams play. While I was playing, she was one of the toughest players I ever faced. Her ground strokes are so solid, her serve is one of the most powerful in women's tennis, and mentally she is just so strong.
I was seeing kids my age playing shows at their parents' houses or the couple of all-ages venues that existed. I feel like I saw so many different kinds of music that I wouldn't have discovered on my own.
I think it's great fun sometimes when I am playing golf, just to give it a little uch, is to bet the other guy five bucks a hole or something like that.
I was surprised when I finally moved to Boston and the East Coast, to discover that there weren't that many vibraphone players around. And I was the only one playing with four mallets.
When I was 15 or 16 playing in groups, we used to sit in the car and try to write the lyrics down as a song was playing, and we'd assign each person a verse, you know: 'I'm going to do the first one. You go for the second one.' And then sometimes you'd wait an hour for it to come on again so you could finish it up.
I like playing someone with a certain stability at the periphery of the madness.
I was looking forward my whole career to once playing somewhere else to get the experience, and if I thought about moving to England, I always had Manchester United in my head.
My original dream was to become a singer-songwriter, so I sent a video of myself playing the piano and singing to all the big agencies.
Playing live is such a total visceral experience, and really, as a musician, you're trained from the beginning to be a live performer.
Screen is satisfying because it's so technical and mysterious. It's like playing roulette: you get a script, you think it's either great or naff, but you have no idea how it will really turn out. On stage, you are your own editor - and you get brief moments of grace, where suddenly you feel free.
I'm a little bit superstitious, and I think that just comes from playing hockey. I won't avoid the number thirteen. A big one for me, though, is walking under a ladder. I've always felt like that's tempting fate. That's just throwing it right in their face. Check me out. I just walked under a ladder. What are you going to do about it?
Playing music has always felt very natural. You know, you do try to do other things, and you do learn lessons that way, but, eventually - well... if your dad is a plumber, you become a plumber. It's the family business, and I felt like I was taking over the family business.
All I will say is that I'm playing a lot of different roles that, to be honest, are more interesting and demanding than any I've played before.
I wasn't playing the music, the music was playing me... and once that went away, and I had the feeling I was playing music, I had to stop. The need to go onstage and get my brain flattened every night left me, and what I didn't wanna do is go onstage and perpetrate a fraud... You cannot fool an audience.
Obviously, any living musician born after 1960 has been touched by rock and roll. It's the music of our time, and it's 'in the air,' as Steve Reich would say. My experience of it is just really direct because I'm actually playing in a collaborative band.
I see myself as a character actor, and I've always been drawn to playing characters that are different from myself because acting is escapism for me. I've never been that comfortable playing people that are like me.
I was on the dole once. I loved it. It was only for a couple of years, when I was 20 or 21 and playing in a band. Back then, this was something young folk did - you got your rent paid, a little bit of money to live on, and you loafed around, wrote songs, rehearsed and dreamed of playing Wembley Stadium.
When I was kid, I remember playing 'Vogue' by Madonna over and over and over again. And ah, you know, something about the beat was really cool, and Madonna, visually, was on TV all the time and I thought she was just so beautiful.
Touring has been a major part of my career. I've done a lot of huge shows, including a 13-night sell-out stint at the Indoor Arena in Birmingham, playing to a total audience of 65,000.
With Freebass, there were no rules, really. It was all rather chaotic. Obviously, Hooky was playing the high end stuff, which he always does; Mani was doing the bottom end, and I thought I'd go midway and meet everyone in the middle.
'Madden' is all about speed, and the Falcons have it on both sides of the ball. I love playing sports games. I played my PlayStation so much, I pretty much wore it out.
As a piano player, if 10 is concert level, I'd put myself at a 5 or a 6, but in a completely different genre than classical or opera. In terms of classical and opera, playing accompaniment, I'd say I was a 3.
The idea of growing up in the South and being a man is an interesting thing; there's a lot masculinity involved, with hunting, fishing, and playing sports that rural people take pride in, but at the same time, I grew up really not wanting to hate anybody.
You learn by playing a great team, and I'm talking about character things, not hockey technique.
I love playing idiots. I love very weird, confused women.
I started playing violin when I was six, so I thought I could be a professional. It wasn't until I was 15 when I got into acting classes and realized this was what I wanted to do.
I don't need the credits for playing the blues and paying the dues. I've already done it. There are some other things to do here - movies and scores and voice-overs.
I went to this little performing arts school in downtown Phoenix. You had to dance or act, and everyone sang in choir. I started out playing the saxophone, but I always wanted to be in an orchestra. That was a dream as a kid, and there aren't a lot of saxophones in an orchestra.
One night I was standing on Third Avenue playing my guitar, when this big Irish policeman came strolling by, and stopped to listen to my singing and playing. When I was done, he politely handed me a ticket for disturbing the peace, while at the same time telling me how much he liked my voice. I wish I still had that ticket.
I think people in Montreal smoke a lot, and I used to smoke when I was 17-18, and just picked it up when I was playing juniors. But I think I stopped when I was 22, which was a big decision in my life.
My mother was the only one who encouraged and inspired me for singing. She was singing all the time in the house, playing records also.
Playing guitar was one of my childhood hobbies, and I had played a little at school and at camp. My parents would drag me out to perform for my family, like all parents do, but it was a hobby - nothing more.
That's what I love about music. It's immediate. There's a connection whether you are playing at Hyde Park or Chicago, and it's been happening since the beginning of time and the troubadours.
