Rock Musicians Quotes

All rock musicians are deaf ... Or insensitive to mellow sounds. ~ Marc Bolan

I'm pretty sure that when babies are born in Oregon, they leave the hospital with birth certificates - and teeny-tiny sleeping bags. Everyone in the state camps. The hippies and the rednecks. The hunters and the tree huggers. Rich people. Poor people. Even rock musicians. Especially rock musicians. Our band had perfected the art of punk-rock camping, throwing a bunch of crap into the van with, like, an hour's notice and just driving out into the mountains, where we'd drink beer, burn food, jam on our instruments around the campfire, and sack out under the open sky. Sometimes, on tour, back in the early hardscrabble days, we'd even camp as an alternative to crashing in another crowded, roach-infested rock 'n' roll house.
I don't know if it's because no matter where you live, the wilderness is never that far off, but it just seemed like everyone in Oregon camped. ~ Gayle Forman

A rock musician's career is short-lived. To extend it, you need to do other things to keep yourself fresh. ~ Nick Cave

The best rock musicians are the most exciting people in the world. ~ James Daly

Lately, I'm spending more and more time working with non-rock musicians and leaving the mainstream - almost dissolving into another world, musically. ~ Robert Plant

Folk musicians have a lot of the same self-importance, but they're way more cruel and jealous than rock musicians - I know this for a fact because I used to be a folk musician. ~ Christopher Guest

It was not even necessary for people to know how to sing to be considered rock musicians. Bob Dylan had no clue, but that did not stop him from becoming one of the greatest artists ever. ~ Frans Johansson

All those happy, pretty, successful people- he hated them because he knew they didn't really exist, and he hated even more the magazine that glorified them and in a way that made them exist, actors, rock musicians, famous writers, politicians. Those aren't people, he fumed, they're photographs. ~ Russell Banks

Keith Jarrett's achievements and contribution are immense and unique and it is primarily the fact that he cannot be pigeonholed which has so confused the critics. The breath of his vision and abilities has cut across all categories, encompassing most forms of musical creation. Although he has never had the kind of popularity enjoyed by successful pop or rock musicians, he has built up a substantial following all over the world and at the same time has earned the admiration of his peers – a very rare duality of recognition. As well as this, countless unknown and little-known musicians on all instruments pay affectionate homage to him and his work, recognizing him as one of the central figures of the last three decades of the century. ~ Ian Carr

I started playing guitar at the age of 8 or 9 years. Very early, and I was like already into pop music and was just trying to copy what I heard on the radio. And at a very early age I started experimenting with old tape recorders from my parents. I was 11 or 12 at that time and then when I was like 14 or 15 I had a punk band. I made all the classic rock musician's evolutions and then in the early nineties I bought my first sampler and that is how I got into electronic music, because I was able to produce it on my own. That was quite a relief. ~ Christian Fennesz

There seems to be an inclination among rock musicians to be very carefree with money, but I negotiate the best flight and hotel deals on our tours to maximise the band's income - I don't want too see too much taken off the top line. ~ Ian Anderson

You know what rock musicians are? They are hung up, neurotic, over-weight hippies with sex problems. ~ David Lee Roth

I lived in an area where there were a lot of rock musicians, and we got together regularly in our studios. ~ Ken Hensley

There is a limited supply of excellent songs, but I am not the only one. Paul McCartney, one of the best songwriters of all time, has only produced manure for the past 25 years. Rock musicians over 30 only produce unimportant material. ~ Noel Gallagher

Rock musicians are consistent in their disdain and irreverent treatment of Jesus Christ. ~ Tim LaHaye

After 1968 the restored communist regime required all Czech rock musicians to sit a written exam in Marxism Leninism ~ Niall Ferguson

The Who got paid 4000 pounds during those days, but we always smashed our equipment that cost more than 5000 pounds. ~ Pete Townshend

My first real writing job was at 'Rolling Stone,' so I wrote about rock-and-roll and politics and the like. At the time, I really didn't know what I wanted to write, and I did a bunch of investigative journalism. ~ Tim Cahill

What separates great jazz musicians from average ones is Taste. Those who have taste consistently choose notes, tempos, timbres and voicings that seduce and satisfy attentive listeners. ~ Marc Myers

My father was the role model I looked up to. My dad was an entertainer, too. I patterned my life after him. He wanted me to do better than he did. He never sold a record in his life, but to me, he was still a rock star. ~ Tracy Morgan

I don't tell 'U.S. Weekly' which parties I'm going to. I write songs. ~ Kid Rock

Dear Deborah,

Words do not come easily for so many men. We are taught to be strong, to provide, to put away our emotions. A father can work his way through his days and never see that his years are going by. If I could go back in time, I would say some things to that young father as he holds, somewhat uncertainly, his daughter for the very first time. These are the things I would say:

When you hear the first whimper in the night, go to the nursery leaving your wife sleeping. Rock in a chair, walk the floor, sing a lullaby so that she will know a man can be gentle.

When Mother is away for the evening, come home from work, do the babysitting. Learn to cook a hotdog or a pot of spaghetti, so that your daughter will know a man can serve another's needs.

When she performs in school plays or dances in recitals, arrive early, sit in the front seat, devote your full attention. Clap the loudest, so that she will know a man can have eyes only for her.

When she asks for a tree house, don't just build it, but build it with her. Sit high among the branches and talk about clouds, and caterpillars, and leaves. Ask her about her dreams and wait for her answers, so that she will know a man can listen.

When you pass by her door as she dresses for a date, tell her she is beautiful. Take her on a date yourself. Open doors, buy flowers, look her in the eye, so that she will know a man can respect her.

When she moves away ~ Lisa Wingate

We live in a vast and awesome universe in which, daily, suns are made and worlds destroyed, where humanity clings to an obscure clod of rock. The significance of our lives and our fragile realm derives from our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. ~ Carl Sagan

Receiving oral sex from an ugly person is like rock climbing; you should never look down. ~ Stewart Francis

I assume there must be some kind of genetic thrust. My two grandmothers were very different, but both of them were frustrated musicians. ~ Joni Mitchell

It was always my belief that rock and roll belonged in the hands of the people, not rock stars. ~ Patti Smith

I don't have a computer. I'm going to wait until that whole fad is over. I was suckered in on the Pet Rock. Not twice, people. ~ Kathleen Madigan

My family were symphonic musicians and in the opera. Also, it was my era, the love of radio. We used to listen to the radio at night, close our eyes and see movies far more beautiful than you can photograph. ~ Francis Ford Coppola

You know what's punk rock about marriage? Nothing. You know what's punk rock about marriage? All the puke and shit and piss. ~ Jenny Offill

Q: What's hard for you?
A: Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. Math is hard. Reading a map. Following orders. Carpentry. Electronics. Plumbing. Remembering things correctly. Straight lines. Sheet rock. Finding a safety pin. Patience with others. Ordering in Chinese. Stereo instructions in German. ~ Tom Waits

I'm very unstable; there's no stability in a musician's life at all. You live on a bus or on the road hand to mouth and you don't know where your money's coming from. ~ James Taylor

We have moved from an age in which government leaders sought to do what was best for the people to one in which the political leadership is convinced it knows what is best for the people, whether they like it or not. ~ Ralph Peters

A song should stand on its own and on what a singer does with it. It shouldn't need a lot of extra help to be good. ~ Oliver

Whether you're sad, you're a mess, or you've hit rock bottom, you still have TO PLAY! That's how people like us survive ~ Kaori Miyazono

The biggest question I have is if you're a rock singer or a rock 'n' roll band, or if you're a pop singer ... if you've made your way in another genre of music and now you want to make a country record, why? That's my question. Why? ~ Joe Nichols

This, at last, was where things were as they ought to be. Everything was in its place
the tree, the earth underneath, the rock, the moss. In autumn, it would be right; in winter under the snow, it would be perfect in its wintriness. Spring would come again and miracle within miracle would unfold, each at its special pace, some things having died off, some sprouting in their first spring, but all of equal and utter rightness. ~ Jean Liedloff

It's a reminder that God is always, always there. He's our rock, our strength, our refuge. And when we can't find even a minuscule trace of His handprint in what we're going through, He's reminding us that He's still there. And He always will be. No matter what. ~ Diane Moody

Music chooses her musicians. ~ Patricia Barber

Look at nature with science as a lens. The rock swarms, the clod dances; the mineral is but the vegetable stepping down, and the animal an ascending plant; the man, a beast extended; and the angel, a developed human soul. ~ C. A. Bartol

So when I got to be about 13 or 14, I started listening - even though my parents music was way cool - to contemporary hard rock at that time, which was Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Ted Nugent and all that, and that's just where I came from. ~ Slash

We must wait," she said. "They are involved in important buisness."
Her tone was serious, almost reverntial. The two of them stopped, some five meters from the group of me. They were all leaning forward, staring intently at an upright rock placed in the middle of the circle. Will thought they must be praying, although no words were being said.
Then, as one, they all slumped back with a roar of disappointment.
"It flew away!" said one figure, and Will recognized the voice. It was the man who had rescued him. "Almost to the top and it flew away!"
e lookd questioningly to Cieliema and she rolled her eyes at him. "Grown men gambling on two flies crawling up a stone."
"Gambling?" he said. "I thought they were praying.
She raised an eyebrow. "To them, it's much the same thing. ~ John Flanagan

You see, you are not so soft after all; you are rock and wave and the peeling barks of trees, you are ladybirds and the smell of a garden after the rain. When you put your best foot forward, you are taking the north side of a mountain with you. ~ Ella Frances Sanders

Moriarty smiled his adder's smile.
And I relaxed. I knew. My destiny and his wound together. It was a sensation I'd never got before upon meeting a man. When I'd had it from women, the upshot ranged from disappointment to attempted murder. Understand me, Professor James Moriarty was a hateful man, the most hateful, hateable, creature I have ever known, not excluding Sir Augustus and Kali's Kitten and the Abominable Bloody Snow-Bastard and the Reverend Henry James Prince. He was something man-shaped that had crawled out from under a rock and moved into the manor house. But, at that moment, I was his, and I remain his forever. If I am remembered, it will be because I knew him. From that day on, he was my father, my commanding officer, my heathen idol, my fortune and terror and rapture. ~ Kim Newman

It seemed like, in the early '80s, there was just a moment where there was suddenly no specific notion of what a rock band could be or what a song could be. ~ Bucky Pope

If you don't have sex and you don't do drugs, your rock 'n' roll better be awfully good. ~ Abbie Hoffman

As an artist, I feel so fortunate to be able to learn from all these great musicians that came before me, when some people have nobody that came before them. ~ Kiesza

I'm an engineer. I see myself as a toolmaker and the musicians are my customers ... They use my tools. ~ Robert Moog

Lou Reed's music has been in the lives of millions of people all over the world for decades. He had a truly universal presence and was respected by musicians across all genres. ~ Henry Rollins

I want to be both for you: simple and a spectacle. I want to - to put on a show. But I need you to see me underneath. Whatever I wear or do or say, I want you to see me. ~ J.A. Rock

Rock & roll is a type of sensuous music unfit for impressionable minds. ~ Tip O'Neill

The world always said to just be yourself, but it turned out when Evelyn was herself, no guys were at all interested, so she was left with games of make-believe, expressing enthusiasm for whatever the men wanted to do, be it rock climbing or going to a cheese-beer pairing or a Knicks game. ~ Stephanie Clifford

It's a difficult path that we tread, us Indie self-publishers, but we're not alone. How many bands practicing in their dad's garage have heard of a group from the neighbourhood who got signed by a recording company? Or how many artists who love to paint, but are not really getting anywhere with it hear of someone they went to art school with being offered an exhibition in a gallery? How many chefs who love to get creative around food hear of someone else who's just landed a job with Marco Pierre White?
There's no difference between us and them. There is, however, a huge difference in how everyone else perceives the writer. And there's a huge difference between all of us – the writers, the musicians, the composers, the chefs, the dance choreographers and to a certain extent the tradesmen - and the rest of society in that no one understands us. It's a wretched dream to hope that our creativity gets recognised while our family thinks we're wasting our time when the lawn needs mowing, the deck needs painting and the bedroom needs decorating.
It's acceptable to go into the garage to tinker about with a motorbike, but it's a waste of a good Sunday afternoon if you go into the garage and practice your guitar, or sit in your study attempting to capture words that have been floating around your brain forever. ~ Karl Wiggins

When once we have discovered how pain and suffering diminish the personality and how joy alone increases it, then the morbid attraction which is felt for evil, pain and abnormality will have lost its power. Why do we reward our men of genius, our suicides, our madmen and the generally maladjusted with the melancholy honours of a posthumous curiosity? Because we know that it is our society which has condemned these men to death and which is guilty because, out of its own ignorance and malformation, it has persecuted those who were potential saviours; smiters of the rock who might have touched the spring of healing and brought us back into harmony with ourselves. Somehow, then, and without going mad, we must learn from these madmen to reconcile fanaticism with serenity. Either one, taken alone, is disastrous, yet except through the integration of these two opposites there can be no great art and no profound happiness--and what else is worth having? For nothing can be accomplished without fanaticism and without serenity nothing can be enjoyed. ~ Cyril Connolly

We treat racism in this country like it's a style that America went through. Like flared legs and lava lamps. Oh, that crazy thing we did. We were hanging black people. We treat it like a fad instead of a disease that eradicates millions of people. You've got to get it at a lab, and study it, and see its origins, and see what it's immune to and what breaks it down. ~ Chris Rock

Satellites can see your thoughts, but not through rock,' is like something they might say. In John William's case, it was conscious hyperbole and therefore commentary. At one level, it was reefer-inspired. It was partly for fun. It was other things, too-but not derangement. I give no credence to the interpretation, and I knew him better than anybody. ~ David Guterson

She's like an island
Made of rock, with one lone tree at the top
Of the only mountain. She's like the sole
Incongruous goat tethered to the tree,
Smiling almost as you approach, scraping
The ground with its horns, and then--
Lickety split--lurching hard, daring
The rope to snap. ~ Tracy K. Smith

Fleetwood Mac are more like a folk-rock band. ~ Ann Wilson

I remember Mitch Miller saying every week, This rock and roll stuff will never last. But one doesn't like to bring that up to Mitch. ~ Rosemary Clooney

You can find old Jewish newspapers from Detroit that have my promotional ad in them. It was a totally insane time in my life. Paul Rudd was also a bar mitzvah emcee, you know? It was like being a local rock star in Detroit. ~ James Wolk