The artist has one career. The manager has as many careers as they have artists. The record company has as many careers as it has artists.
Robert FrippWhen a record company makes a mistake, the artist pays for it. When the artist makes a mistake, the artist pays for it.
Robert FrippIn our actions we reveal the world in which we live. We speak of what we see, and understand, and know. That is, everything we do is reflective of who and what we are. A musician presents a view from the world in which they live. This provides an opportunity for an audience to look into this world. Similarly a reviewer reviews himself or herself.
Robert FrippPerformance is a vehicle for entering different worlds of experiencing.
Robert FrippIn music, the majors and minors work together quite well.
unknownI don't think the backstory really dignifies anything, or solves any problems that you tried to solve during the recording.
"Oh, this is all based on the John Wilkes Booth story, and that third song is when he was trapped in the barn." I mean, I could tell you anything. "Helen Keller made an appearance in the last tune, and it's sung by her mother." "Oh, okay."
Your mind will make sense of anything.
Tom WaitsYou have two options. You can stay the same and protect the formula that gave you your initial success. They're going to crucify you for staying the same. If you change, they're going to crucify you for changing, but staying the same is boring. So, of the two options I'd rather be crucified for changing.
Joni MitchellNo artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a strange, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.
Martha GrahamIt is ridiculously easy to become bitter in this trade, so hard not to resent in at least some small capacity the success of others.
The real problem is that envy and bitterness are such poor materials for a songwriter to work with.
A person can write one, maybe two songs on the subject and even if the pieces are well crafted, probably no one will want to hear them.
I capsulized insults and aimed them at specific individuals in some of my early music and now regret those acts more than any others in my creative life.
Jimmy WebbWhat has worked before is never as good as something that has never been tried before, even if it doesn't work.
Jimmy WebbIt is wrong to chide the novel for being satisfied by mysterious coincidences, but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty.
Milan KunderaComputers are useless, they can only give you answers.
Pablo PicassoI wish there had been a music business 101 course I could have taken.
Kurt CobainThe way I see it, rock n' roll is folk music.
Robert PlantDon't try to explain it, just sell it.
Colonel Tom ParkerI don't think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow.
BB KingYou're a local band until you get a record contract, then all of a sudden Bruce Springsteen is your competition.
Sammy LlanaIf the milk industry can make their product seem sexy and increase consumer demand, there must be hope for music.
Gary Arnold, Merchandising Manager, Best BuyWithout music, the greatest marketing plans in the whole world don't mean shit.
Eddie Rosenblatt, Geffen RecordsThe easiest way to get laid by a girl, or get rid of her, is to write a song about her.
David CrosbyWithout freedom of expression, good taste means nothing.
Neil YoungI'm a survivor in a business that constantly rejects you.
Dick ClarkI've probably put together more deals backstage at concerts than by telephone.
Michael LippmanPeople don't buy plastic and paper, they buy emotions.
Scott YoungMoney had never been the main thing for me. It's the legacy that was important.
Berry GordyThe hardest thing in the world to do in this business is start a band nobody's heard of.
Tom Whalley, Interscope RecordsAnybody that forms a group, writes songs and releases records and says they don't care if people like them are complete liars.
James Dean BradfieldIndependent labels take nothing and make something out of it. Major labels buy that something, and try to make more out of it.
Tom SilvermanJust because you can record, doesn't mean you should.
Christopher KnabJust because it happened to you, doesn't mean it's interesting.
Dennis HopperModern music is people who can't think signing artists who can't write songs to make records for people who can't hear.
Frank ZappaWe live in an age of music for people who don't like music. The record industry discovered some time ago that there aren't that many people who actually like music. For a lot of people, music's annoying, or at the very least they don't need it. They discovered if they could sell music to a lot of those people, they could sell a lot more records.
T Bone BurnettRestrictions will set you free.
W. A. MathieuYou are whatever you pretend to be.
Kurt VonnegutDon't push it. Just let it fall.
Duke EllingtonNo man's knowledge can go beyond his experience.
John LockeAfter he'd done a show in Nashville, James Brown asked me to engineer a session for him there. Well, there were no flights available, so I jumped in the car and drove all the way.
It took me five hours to get there, and as soon as I arrived at the studio James and the musicians were ready to record, so we cut four tracks and then, before I left, James told his manager, "Give Ron ten percent of that last song."
The song was "Sex Machine" so we wrote up the songwriter's contract and I've been collecting on it ever since!
Ron LenhoffJames Brown was well known for turning up at recording sessions without having written any songs. He'd just have the idea in his head and when he came in he'd improvise right then and there.
He could also play the drums and the keyboard instruments, so he understood exactly what he wanted. He'd build a pattern with the musicians around the bass and drums, and then bring the guitar in.
All the musicians worked with James for a long time, so they knew what he wanted, and once he got the rhythm section going he would start working with the horns.
Ron LenhoffWhenever James Brown was doing a concert in or near Cincinatti he would come by King Studios late at night and record maybe three or four tracks in just as many hours.
At King we had the facility to record, mix, master, press, and label the discs, so the finished product could be ready for shipping within 24 hours.
Ron LenhoffAs much as sound is important to me as an engineer, it is the performance and the feel that sell the record.
I know a lot of bad-sounding records that were huge hits because they moved people emotionally, and some records that sounded perfect but didn't sell shit.
I still feel that people have trouble relating to things that are perfect.
Al SchmittOne of the advantages of those days was that we guys went from one date to the next, dealing with all different kinds of music.
I mean, I can remember a specific day when I did Ike and Tina Turner from nine to twelve in the morning, Henry Mancini in the afternoon, and then Sam Cooke at night.
Al SchmittToday if you just do the tracks on two songs in three hours it's unbelievable, whereas back in the fifties and sixties we would complete four songs in three hours.
We even completed an entire Ray Charles album with twelve songs in just seven hours!
Al SchmittOn one occasion Tommy was putting all of this stuff together on the mono master tape and I said, "What would you do if I did this?" I was kidding around, but by accident my hand actually hit the Record button.
He looked at me and I looked at him and we both jumped to stop the machine, but I had already erased what was on there.
We spent hours piecing four or five little outtakes together. No one ever knew what had happened, but that taught me a lesson to never screw around the recording studio.
Al SchmittWhen I was six or seven years old my father used to take me to my uncle's studio... and I'd watch these big bands being recorded with just one microphone.
It was the musicians who would be moved around. Soloists got up, came down and played their solos in front of the mike, and then went back and sat down.
I can also remember looking out there and seeing all of the guys with no shoes on so that they wouldn't make a noise when they were stomping.
Al SchmittOnce of the nice things about being successful in this business is that you get to work with successful people.
They have the finances to hire the best musicians and work in the best studios with the best equipment. After that you've got to be stupid not to get the best sound.
Al SchmittJohn Lennon was always looking for the impossible, the unattainable. He was never satisfied.
He once said to me years later, "You know, George, I've never really liked anything we've ever done." I said, "Really John? But you made some fantastic records!" He said, "Well, if I could do them all over again I would."
George MartinA&R people are clueless. If they knew what was going down they would all be multimillionaires, wouldn't they?
Mickie MostI received a special delivery letter from Colonel Parker (Elvis' manager) with a note saying, "Dear Jerry, we expect you here by the weekend. Enclosed you'll find your contract for the new movie score and the recording sessions that are to follow."
However, behind the cover letter was this blank page with just the space outlined for Parker and I to sign and date. There as no contract!
So, I spoke with him on the phone and when I pointed out to him that there had been a mistake he said, "What mistake?" I said, "Well there's a page for the signatures but I don't see any contract." He said, "That's the contract!" I said, "Tom, there's nothing written on the page."
He said, "Well, boy, you just sign it. We'll fill it in later!"
Jerry LeiberI was with Decca from 1953 to 1960, and I learned more about the business during that time than any other.
You see, the great thing about being the head of A&R in those days is that you were the guy who really made all of the decisions with respect to songs, with respect to the sound and the arrangements, with respect to what records came out and when they came out. You controlled everything.
Today everything is done by committee. I mean, nine guys have to get together before they can even put out a record.
Bob ThieleToday they build studios with almost complete isolation on each musician. They sit in little cages and listen on headphones.
In my opinion, that's not so good for the creative process. We used to gather around the piano, run over the tunes a few times, and the musicians would get ideas for fills or for rhythm licks, and that was more fun.
I know that still goes on, but it's not the same.
Chet AtkinsYou get older. You start having hopes for other people rather than yourself.
Bob DylanIt doesn't matter if you're the greatest guitar player in the world. If you're not enlightened, forget it.
George HarrisonI lose myself at some point during almost every musical performance.
There's some point of struggle and super self-consciousness, but I always get lost at some point.
While I'm playing, there's a patten of struggling through something and then cracking through it by a weird combination of willpower and letting go.
That's the most enjoyable thing for me: "Uh-oh, he's gone!"
David TornSometimes you would feel this presence together with the audience and the band, which was just such a mindblower.
It felt better than the other gigs. You felt some sort of connection, where there was a whole wave of five or ten thousand people coming at you. You felt that you and the audience were actually one.
Ringo StarrI'll go for things that I know are going to be wrong, with a vengeance.
Neil YoungMusic should go right through you, leave some of itself inside you, and take some of you with it when it leaves.
Henry ThreadgillYou've got to be able to hold a lot of contradictory ideas in your mind without going nuts.
I feel like to do my job right, when I walk out onstage I've got to feel like it's the most important thing in the world. I've also got to feel like, well, it's only rock and roll.
Somehow you've got to believe both of those things.
Bruce SpringsteenYou have to persist, and out of the sheer frustration of what you've been doing or haven't been doing, you just come out the other side.
Of course, when you come to the other side, you find that there's an even bigger hill to climb than the last one.
Allan HoldsworthWhether you are playing in the bar, the church, the strip joint, or the Himalayas, the first duty of music is to complement and enhance life.
Carlos SantanaThey just said, "Roll the tape." No rehearsal or nothing.
Muddy Waters didn't come in and say, "I wanna rehearse." He used to look at me and say, "Let's just play the blues. That's all you need to do."
Buddy GuyI think musicians, as they grow older, usually become interested in doing something more lasting.
You've got to settle down and make everything count, and make sure that it's worthy of being heard again, not just a throwaway.
Eric ClaptonThe most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.
Duke EllingtonI don't care who likes it or buys it.
Because if you use that criterion, Mozart would have never written Don Giovanni, Charlie Parker never would have played anything but swing music.
There comes a point at which you have to stand up and say, this is what I have to do.
Branford MarsalisI tried to play in front of the beat in a way that didn't rush it, or behind the beat n a way that didn't drag it.
Rick DankoI asked Miles after the gig, "Miles, what am I supposed to be doing up there?"
He said, "When they play fast, you play slow. When they play slow, you play fast."
Miles DavisYou can build a wall to stop people, but eventually, the music, it'll cross that wall.
That's the beautiful thing about music - there's no defense against it.
I mean look at Joshua and fuckin' Jericho - made mincemeat of that joint. A few trumpets, you know?
Keith RichardsWhen I've played from my mind I get in trouble.
Stevie Ray VaughanI've practiced my tone for almost 50 years, and if I can't hear my tone, I can't play. If I can't play, then I won't get paid. If I don't get paid, then I lose the house, you know?
It's like a chain reaction. If I lose my tone, I can't fuck, can't make love, can't do nothin'. I'll just walk into the ocean and die, if I lose my tone.
Miles DavisEvery guitarist has a special quality of sound.
The best ones will use a good ear, much sensitivity, and a thorough knowledge of music to prepare the nuances and colors of sound.
Andres SegoviaYou can tell whether a person plays or not by the way he carries the instrument, whether it means something to him or not.
Then the way they talk and act. If they act too hip, you know they can't play shit.
Miles DavisHow you play a note is just as important as what note that is.
Henry KaiserAt the end of the show, he'll leave the stage, and the sirens will be going, and the limosines waiting, and Charlie Watts will walk back to his drumkit and change the position of his drumsticks by two millimeters. Then he'll look at it. Then if it looks good, he'll leave.
The drums are about to be stripped down and put in the back of a truck, and he cannot leave if he's got it in his mind that he's left his sticks in a displeasing way.
Keith RichardsWhen you're making an album and you have this groups of songs, they're like what a newspaper photo looks like if you magnify it - all you see are the dots!
Everything seems to be unbelievably important in its own little tiny thing. Now that the album is done, I've been pulling back and zooming out and starting to see the picture.
Tom HamiltonI talk to many young painters, because I teach art in schools. I ask them:
Why do you think that what you do ends at the edges of this canvas?
Think of the frame. What frame are you working in? Not just that bit of wood around the edge, but the room you're in, the light you're in, the time and place you're in. How can you redesign it?
I would say that to musicians, too. I see them spending a lot of time working on the internal details of what they're doing and far less time working on the ways of positioning it in the world.
By "positioning it" I don't only mean thinking of ways to get it to a record company, but thinking of where it could go, and where it fits in the cultural picture. What else does it relate to?
Brian EnoYou might not feel like playing pretty all the time. Instead you might want to play something nasty. You might want to play something out of context with the tune. It might be a note that creates so much tension it becomes unpleasant, but you want it to sound that way.
George BensonWhen the chord changes, you should change.
Joe PassI try to be prepared for the moment, through understanding and being warmed up, knowing all about chords and scales, so I don't even have to think and I can get right to what it is I want to say.
Pat MethenyIf it does right by the song, you've made the right choice.
Robbie RobertsonThe question is, "What are you saying with the guitar?" - Not "Can you play this link?" or "What's your speed like?"
It's, "What are you saying with your instrument? What is being communicated in this song?"
The EdgeWRITER TO FRANK ZAPPA:
Have there been parts of your life that you've neglected because you've been absorbed in your music?
FRANK ZAPPA:
Well what am I missing? Do I regret not going horseback riding, or learning how to water ski? Well, no. I don't want to climb mountains, I don't want to do bungie-jumping. I haven't missed any of those things. If you're absorbed by something, what's to miss?
Frank ZappaSome people have a great sense of moral responsibility. Unfortunately it's backed up with a poor sense of musical taste.
Other people have great musical ability, and very little sense of moral responsibility.
It's very difficult to have a good balance.
Eric ClaptonI don't think about the meaning of it all.
I say, just plug in your damn guitar and make some noise.
Paul WesterbergI remember coming to a concert where they had a big catered meal set out for everyone.
I went and said, "Miles, man, you gotta see all this food they got here."
And Miles said, "I didn't come here to eat."
(told by Gary Bartz)
Miles DavisThings turn out better by accident sometimes.
But you can't organize accidents.
Jeff BeckI saw Bob Dylan getting criticized in Australia by this guy who was saying, "Your new songs aren't as relevant as your old songs."
And Dylan just said, "Well, I'm out here writing songs - what are you doing?"
Bob DylanFor me, I think the only danger is being too much in love with guitar playing.
The MUSIC is the most important thing, and the guitar is only the instrument.
Jerry GarciaDifferences of opinion are part of collaborating with another human being.
But music is not a competitive thing. I don't want to deal with someone who's in competition with me. I want to work together to make music.
Eddie Van HalenMy chops were not as fast, but I just learned more on what was in my mind than what was in my chops.
I learned a long time ago that one note can go a long way if it's the right one, and it will probably whip the guy with twenty notes.
Les PaulTake it easy, but take it.
Woody GuthrieIf you're going to sweep the floor, sweep it better than anybody in town.
And if you're going to play the guitar, really, really, really get in it, and don't be jivin'.
Carlos SantanaIf I can get out of the way, if I can be pure enough, if I can be selfless enough, and if I can be generous and loving and caring enough to abandon what I have and my own preconceived, silly notions of what I think I am - and become truly who in fact I am, which is really just another child of God - then the music can really use me.
And therein lies my fulfillment. That's when the music starts to happen.
John McLaughlinThe general attitude is, "I want it, and I want it now!"
But it really takes years if you're going to do it right, and a lot of kids just don't want to take the time to work on it and see where it's all going, and what it means, and where it comes from, and how they should apply it and use it in playing their songs.
It doesn't make any difference how technically good you are or fast you are or how many notes you know. You just can't do it in two years.
Johnny WinterI like to play with people who can play simple and are not threatened by other musicians thinking they can't play. So that eliminates 99 percent of all musicians.
Neil YoungYou can't compute or calculate the chemistry that arises when you put together a band.
No one knows until you start working together.
Jimmy PageNot everyone is going to like what I do, and that's something I can accept.
If everyone liked what I did, I probably wouldn't be playing anything of depth.
Joshua RedmanApproach your guitar intelligently, and if there are limits, don't deny them.
Work within your restrictions. Somethings you can do better than others, some things you can't do as well.
So accentuate the positive.
Chet AtkinsIt takes a lot of discipline to be very proficient on your instrument.
You really have to exercise your willpower - reach down really deep within and pull out stuff you never knew you had, strength you ever bothered to find before.
Steve VaiI'm only 49 years old. I'm still in the middle of this whole thing.
I don't feel like it's finished at all. I'm still planning to write better songs.
Paul McCartneyIf you hit a wrong note, then make it right by what you play afterwards.
Joe PassI don't think you can ever do your best.
Doing your best is a process of TRYING to do your best.
Townes Van ZandtI've done a drum clinic in L.A. Nice kids but they all asked the same question. "How did you work out that fill?"
I told them, "I don't know." I don't know! I feel it, it's that particular day, who knows?
Just play. Let your personality come out.
Manu KatcheThe music has generated all the techniques I use.
When I sit down to learn to play something it is not because I want to master a technique. It is because I want to hear what an idea sounds like.
Pat MartinoThe focus of my playing is the groove, and every time I find a new rhythm, I find I can write a bunch of new songs.
Learning how to dance, or drum, or to swing my body in a new way is the fundamental way I find a new riff. Because when you learn to swing your body in a new way, you begin to swing with your instrument differently.
Stone Gossard"Yeeeeah," he says, fingering the valves, "when she gets broken in, a few weeks down the road, this is going to be a nice horn."
"Sounds like she blows real easy, Diz."
He fixes me with a stagey stare. "Sheeeeeet. Ain't none of them blow easy."
Dizzy Gillespie(On Practice:) It takes a lot of devotion and work, or maybe I should say play, because if you love it, that's what it amounts to.
I haven't found any shortcuts, and I've been looking for a long time.
Chet AtkinsA non-musician is thrilled to be doing music - quite happy to sit there and plunk one note all day- and is very alert to the effect of that.
Nonmusicians really LISTEN sometimes, because that's the only thing they have available to them.
Brian EnoI write by twiddling the strings into a different tuning - I throw it open to the cosmos.
Then when you discover something that has an element of divine intervention, it's like a blessing.
Joni MitchellIf you pick up a guitar and it says, "Take me! I'm yours!" - then that's the one for you.
Frank ZappaWhenever I start working on a song, I immediately try to forget everything, to empty my hands and head of anything that may be hanging over from another song or album.
I try to approach it like this is the first time I've ever played guitar. What am I going to do?
The EdgeMy own thing is in my head. I hear sounds and if I don't get them together, nobody else will.
Jimi HendrixIf there's ever a problem, I film it and it's no longer a problem. It's a film.
Andy WarholRecording represents the future. The concert hall represents the past.
Glenn GouldTo me, the ideal audience-to-artist relationship is one-to-zero relationship.
I'm not happy with words like "artist" and "public" and the hierarchical implications.
The artist should be permitted anonymity, unaware of the presumed demand of the marketplace. They'll make contact on a much more meaningful level.
Glenn GouldFailure, for some people, is a vital survival skill.
To work at an artistic level that has some chance of changing the world means risking that your work will change you.
We all know people who have lots of drive, talent, and stability, people whose ideas fall perfectly in place at the leading edge of the mass audience input curve, but who just aren't successful. They work hard and they mean well, but things never quite jell for them, you know?
My bet is they've already signed an unknown contract to fail.
Have you?
Connor Freff CochranAs for fame being power, and all power corrupting, that really isn't the case.
Power per se is neither positive nor negative. Lots of famous people are perfectly nice folks... but they either started out that way or else screwed up so badly along the path they were forced to get their act together.
A jerk with money, after all, is still a jerk.
Connor Freff CochranFame increases some of your options in this world. But it limits others.
Celebrity may look interesting, but being in the limelight means you can't really see anything around you.
Was the joke you just told really that funny? Does your date like you or your bank balance? When was the last time you bought groceries without being stared at?
Connor Freff CochranThe problem facing you as an artist is the degree to which you are willing to alter your art, if required, to stay within the current bounds of the loop.
First time out, no problem. You create something. People like it or they don't, and it really doesn't matter which way the dice tumble, so long as you are now out of the closet as an artist.
The real problem enters when you have finally put together a piece of art that a lot of people like; that day when you achieve "success." Like it or not, you have also become a brand. An identity. Score twice in the same category and you've virtually tattooed it across your forehead.
The marketing superstructure that automatically surrounds commercial success will bring pressure against trying anything new.
Connor Freff CochranFame works better as a byproduct than a goal.
Connor Freff CochranMusic is actually a contingent combination of sounds whose emotional resonances are entirely dependent on the audience's personal and shared histories as listeners.
Brian EnoWe should imagine we're making hypothetical film soundtracks, not making songs.
This is always a very liberating idea, because a film soundtrack doesn't have to have a center - the film itself is the center. It allows you to make music that is pure atmosphere.
Brian EnoIf you have a bunch of people sitting in one room and working on one piece of music, and getting immersed in that piece of music, everyone's thinking they should say something just to prove that they're still paying attention, because it's embarrassing to sit in a corner for four hours.
It's much more important for people to genuinely feel they have something to contribute than just interject for the sake of it.
Brian EnoCut a vital connection.
That's a very interesting thing to do because most pieces of music are based around some centre, like a drum track or a drone, which really holds everything together. Just try taking that element out of the music and see what happens.
Brian EnoDon't be ashamed of your own ideas. Most musicians get applauded for sounding like someone else.
People try something out that they think is exciting, and everyone looks a little unsure. Then they play an old James Brown riff and everyone's saying: 'Wow! That's what we want!'
Most of the time musicians are being encouraged to sound recognizable. What I'm doing [as a producer] is encouraging them at the points when they're not.
Brian EnoThe idea of the producer as someone who mediates and converses between the completely non-technical musician and non-artistic engineer, which was the old picture, is now dead because most musicians now occupy all three of those roles.
Brian EnoA studio is an absolute labyrinth of possibilities - this is why records take so long to make because there are millions of permutations of things you can do.
The most useful thing you can do is to get rid of some of those options before you start.
Brian EnoOne of my mottoes is that if you want to get unusual results, work fast and work cheap, because there's more of a chance that you'll get somewhere that nobody else did.
Nearly always, the effect of spending a lot of money is to make things more normal.
Brian EnoI wanted to use the studio like a microscope for sound, which is what good engineers do.
Brian EnoI started coming to the studio with less worked-out pieces, and eventually with nothing at all. I would just start working with that thing, "the studio", as the instrument.
There is nothing outside of this process - this process called recording is the creative process. We don't have the canvas standing in front of any landscape, you are going to make the landscape here and now.
Brian EnoArtists who don't censor their own work: Picasso, Miles Davis, Prince. They're all people who just put it out, and have almost no critical self-censorship. They say, "Let the market decide; let the world decide." You might not be the best person to judge it.
That's a kind of humility, actually: it's a mixture of arrogance, which says, "I know I'm fucking good." But a humility, which says, "I'm not the person to decide."
Brian EnoThe poem the reader reads may be better than that which the writer wrote.
Try to make things that can become better than what you thought you were doing.
Brian EnoThe great benefit of computer sequencers is that they remove the issue of skill, and replace it with the issue of judgement.
With Cubase or Photoshop, anybody can actually do anything, and you can make stuff that sounds very much like stuff you'd hear on the radio, or looks very much like anything you see in magazines.
So the question becomes not whether you can do it or not, because any drudge can do it if they're prepared to sit in front of the computer for a few days, the question then is, "Of all the things you can now do, which do you choose to do? "
Brian EnoThe act of listening is in fact an act of composing.
John CageDo what you've been doing all the time, but now do what you do wholeheartedly.
Endorse the process. Expect to live your whole life as an artist.
Brian EnoI always liked the cusp where something feels if it's familiar but strange at the same time.
It doesn't immediately assault you as being completely weird. You feel seduced by it. But at the same time you can't put your finger on what it is that you recognize. It's a very good feeling.
Brian EnoWe talk to our kids in one way, to our friends at work in another, to our lovers in yet another, to the lady in the corner shop in another.
When we make these shifts we are exercising our understanding of the worlds from which they are listening to us, and we are also projecting onwards our own view of the world in which we would like this conversation to be taking place.
When you think about it, this is an enormous and complex talent that humans spend their lives exercising, rehearsing, refining.
Brian EnoWe do feel that we have experiences of value when we hear pieces of music or read books or see films or admire textiles, don't we?
And when we do, where exactly is it coming from if not from the object?
Brian Eno'Culture' is everything we don't have to do.
Culture consists of the gratuitous stylistic extras that we add to the things we do have to do.
You have to eat, but you don't have to decorate elaborately prepared curries with silver leaf. You have to move around, but you don't have to dance.
Culture is a biological drive for humans. It is not something that we just add on at the end, after we've dealt with all those survival problems, but something we keep doing all the time.
Brian EnoPeople are hearing a lot more context than music, so perhaps I accept that I am now primarily a context maker.
My art is not just what comes out of the end of my trumpet or appears on a record, but a larger experience which is intimately connected to who I appear to be, to my life and charisma.
The 'music', the sonic bit, could end up being quite a small part of the whole experience.
Developing the context- the package, the delivery system, the buzz, the spin, the story - might itself become the art. Like perfume...
Brian EnoWhen you listen to Miles Davis, how much of what you hear is music, and how much is context?
Context is everything that isn't physically contained in the grooves of the record. It includes your knowledge that everyone else says he's great: that must modify the way you hear him. That he was a handsome and imposing man, a member of a romantic minority, that he played with Charlie Parker, that he spans generations, that he underwent various addictions, that he married Cicely Tyson, that he dressed well, that Jean-Luc Godard liked him, that he wore shades and was very cool, that he himself said little about his work, and so on.
Surely all that affects how you hear him: I mean, could it possibly have felt the same if he'd been an overweight heating engineer from Oslo?
When you listen to music, aren't you also 'listening' to all the stuff around it, too?
Brian Eno[on being a producer] The way I work is I try to find out what isn't being done that ought to be done. Sometimes that means somebody ought to make the tea. Sometimes it means somebody ought to re-write the whole bloody song.
Brian EnoMusic is slightly familiar territory. It's very heavily populated now. It's not so thrilling. It's become rather specialised. I like to go into the studio and concentrate directly on that experience rather than walking in with a song and playing it.
Brian EnoThe way children learn is by pretending, imagining what it would be like to be in another situation, which is the essence of culture.
There's this crazy supposition that at the age of 16 or 18 you should suddenly switch all that off because you now know what you're doing, but the people I find interesting are the ones who carry on playing that game.
Brian EnoBeing completely free to choose what to do is actually quite difficult: it can lead you to very depressive crises.
If your time is structured you don't have this problem of "what am I going to do today?"
Brian EnoBeing a record producer is the best paid form of cowardice. Producers often get praised but they have to do a really bad job for anyone to criticise them.
Brian EnoSingers are like Arabs. They abhor a vacuum. And a vacuum is defined as "when I'm not singing".
Brian EnoCooking is a way of listening to the radio.
Brian EnoListen to those drums - like someone bashing on the bars of a prison.
Brian EnoIt's disgraceful how long records take to make nowadays. But I'm Mr Stingy, Mr Cut Through Options. That's one reason people like working with me I think, because I say "Do this, this is fine, we'll make it work."
Exploring all the options is not the issue. It's making one of them work.
Brian EnoWhat matters in modern music is not the part you can write down, the words and the tune, but the rest - the texture, the atmosphere, the references and associations.
Brian EnoI like to write words that are on the border between meaning and nonsense, so you're not quite sure whether they mean anything or not.
Brian EnoWhen people censor themselves they're just as likely to get rid of the good bits as the bad bits.
Brian EnoA strong opinion is very useful to other people.
Brian Eno[about making records] We're making magazines not novels.
Brian EnoI'm always grumbling when I produce, but it's the people who are dissatisfied who get things changed.
Brian EnoLuck is being ready.
Brian EnoWhat you really want to be doing is to be writing lyrics that are outside of your own understanding.
They feel like this is what you want to be singing. But you don't know why.
Brian EnoSomebody in an interview said recently, "What do the words mean?" And I said, "What do the chords mean?"
Brian EnoThis is exactly what I've always liked about pop music: its ability to create crazy emotional landscapes and invite you to come and dance in them.
Brian EnoAfter making a rough mix, Bono listens to and studies this comp over the next few days, changes a word or a line or a verse, rephrases and re-sings, and the process takes place again. In this way, he begins to hone in on a performance, an attitude, a persona. He discovers who is singing the song, and what kind of world that person inhabits.
Brian EnoBut the bottleneck (in most records, probably) is lyric writing. Why? Because the lyricist assumes the really specific job of focusing the music, of pointing it somewhere.
Words are very sharp objects.
Brian EnoYou can know what you DON'T want, and a lot of the process of making a record comes to be the task of finding a cultural space that isn't already ringing with unwanted resonances and over-tones.
This can be a new space, one that no one had identified before, or, it can be an old one that suddenly sounds fresh again.
Brian Eno"Hollywoodization": This is the process where things are evened out, rationalized, nicely lit from all sides, carefully balanced, studiously tested against all known formulae, referred to several committees, and finally made triumphantly unnoticeable.
Brian EnoShould a record be a picture of where you are now, or of all the places you could just as likely be?
Brian EnoAre you really making a record that's recorded in a garage, or are you making a record that reminds you of the feeling of records that are made in garages? (the way a film-maker might use a hand-held camera to give the impression of documentary urgency)
Does it make a difference if people hearing the record say, "That record sounds like trash," rather than, "They've deliberately chosen to make a record that sounds like trash."?
Brian EnoPsychedelia, glam, R&B and soul. These earlier eras of pop music were characterized not by the search for perfection but by bizarre enthusiams, small budgets, erratic technique, crummy equipment and wild abandon.
Brian Eno[about producing Achtung Baby for U2] Buzzwords on this record were trashy, throwaway, dark, sexy, and industrial (all good) and earnest, polite, sweet, righteous, rockist and linear (all bad).
It was good if a song took you on a journey or made you think your hi-fi was broken, bad if it reminded you of recording studios or U2.
Brian Eno"Cool" people stay around the edges and observe the mistakes and triumphs of uncool people (and then write about them).
Brian EnoThe more time you spend on an old idea, the more energy you invest in it, the more solid it becomes, and the more it will exclude new ideas.
Brian EnoYou have to have a measure of arrogance in dealing with anybody in the business. You have to feel that you're right, because ultimately you're not able to trust anyone else's judgment of your work.
If your judgment isn't clear, then their judgment will make no sense to you either.
Brian EnoWrite as if you've discovered a very dusty inscribed stone somewhere, and you're trying to scrape off all the muck to find out what's underneath it, and you keep coming up with one word here, another one there, and you're trying to imagine what might be in between those words.
The only temptation to resist is the temptation to fall into a simple meaning.
Brian EnoThe most important thing in a piece of music is to seduce people to the point where they start searching.
If the music doesn't do that, it doesn't do anything. If it just presents itself and just sits there, if it either declares itself too clearly or is too obscure to even appear to be saying anything, then it seems to me to have failed.
Sitting on that line is very interesting.
Brian EnoThe important thing about lyrics is not exactly what they say, but that they lead you to believe they are saying something.
All the best lyrics I can think of, if you question me about them, I don't know what they're saying, but somehow they're very evocative.
It leaves a space in which the listener can project his or her own meaning into.
Brian EnoRemoval of context is an important point in the magic of music.
Deliberately dismantle or shift contexts around so that something comes from an area where you didn't expect it, or something appears and it has a certain mysteriousness to it. There are ingredients mixed together that you have never heard together before, and that produces a strangeness.
Brian EnoWhen you make music you are acting as a philosopher. You can either do that consciously or you can do it unconsciously, but you're doing it.
John CageIf you're working with electronic media in the recording studio, judgment becomes a very important issue and skill becomes a less important issue.
Brian EnoBeware the panic effect that accompanies the high cost of studio time:
One becomes increasingly oriented toward results, and progressively less inclined to engage in experimental activities that might not lead anywhere.
As a result of this, one focuses one's attention on the safe bet, on the tried and tested techniques.
Brian EnoRepetition doesn't really exist.
As far as your mind is concerned, nothing happens the same twice, even if in every technical sense, the thing is identical. Your perception is constantly shifting. It doesn't stay in one place.
Brian EnoMusicians and other artists interact constantly with at least two types of systems: systems of aesthetics (what will sound good? what type of music to work with?) and economic systems that reward, or fail to reward, their efforts.
If you're confronting a set of results that you don't want, rather than trying to force the existing system to yield up a different kind of results, you might better spend your energy creating an alternative system!
This could mean anything from establishing your own concert outlet for non-commercial music to designing your own microtonal scale.
Brian EnoThe greater you understand the structure of something, the more amazed you'll be at the tiniest movement within it. In that sense the possibilities are limitless.
Brian EnoWhen you place a piece of work in the world, you place it in terms of a set of expectations.
(Eno reaches into his pocket and draws out the latest album by rap group De La Soul.)
When this group released this album, they put it in a package that tells you exactly what kind of focus to bring to hearing it. You're not going to listen to this the way you listen to Mahler or to Stan Kenton.
Brian EnoPeople in the arts often want to aim for the biggest, most obvious target, and hit it smack in the bull's eye.
Of course with everybody else aiming there as well that makes it very hard and expensive to hit.
I prefer to shoot the arrow, then paint the target around it. You make the niches in which you finally reside.
Brian EnoOne of the risks is that people are frightened of taking positions.
In the art world, particularly with painting, people are terrified now about saying that they don't like something, because they might be wrong.
Brian EnoI love bass guitar, because it has so little to do, yet it's so important.
Brian EnoMusic has narrowed down into being not that which is audible, but that which is recordable.
Brian EnoOften in life you are confronted by many possibilities. The best thing you can do is just go for one with a quick decision, then make that choice work for you. It takes you to interesting places with surprising results.
Brian EnoClassical music is weighted very much towards purity and distinction from normal sounds - what makes them musical is that you know they deliberately don't sound like anything else in the world.
What pop music keeps doing is shifting the other way, absorbing more and more of the world.
Brian EnoYou could invent a world in reverse, by inventing the artifacts that ought to be in it first.
You think of what kind of music would be in that world, then you make the music and the world forms itself around the music.
Brian EnoThere are two ways of being an artist. One is to really explore one furrow - like Randy Newman or Joni Mitchell. They're people who've got one territory and they really, really examine it. Saying, "This is my language and I'll get better and better at speaking it."
But I'm not that type of artist. I'm really thrilled by suggesting other ways of talking, other languages one could speak. Once an idea has been floated as convincingly as I think it needs to be, I don't want to go on flogging it forever! It doesn't mean I stop doing it, but I don't want to make it exclusively 'my thing'.
Brian EnoTreat the recording studio as a laboratory for conceptual thinking -- rather than as a mere tool.
Brian EnoJohn Cage made you realize that there wasn't a thing called noise, it was just music you hadn't appreciated.
Brian EnoComposition is a way of living out your philosophy and calling it art.
Brian EnoThe point about working is not to produce great stuff all the time, but to remain ready for when you can.
There's no point in saying, "I don't have an idea today, so I'll just smoke some drugs." You should stay alert for the moment when a number of things are just ready to collide with one another.
A lot of factors go toward creating a work: technological considerations that suddenly are a little exciting to you, some feeling or mood, a nice day, you just had a talk with a friend. All sorts of things will coincide - and that moment doesn't last for long. It's like things in orbit; they'll move away again.
Brian EnoEvery increase in your knowledge is a simultaneous decrease. You learn and you unlearn at the same time. A new certainty is a new doubt as well.
Brian EnoThe special things you can do in a recording studio: Obviously, echoes are evocative because they remind you of places. But the echoes on "On Land" aren't like anything that could possibly exist. On some of these things I'm using 70-second reverbs. Nothing like that exists in nature or in artifact; even the Taj Mahal, which has very long reverberation, is only about 12 seconds. Nonetheless, [the 70-second decay] is evocative of a type of space. It's dramatized, just like Fellini amplifies the lady's breasts.
Brian EnoWhat do Fellini's films have to do with naturalism? He works with the inaccuracies of memory. It's the opposite direction from naturalism: elevating things to mythical, archetypal status. Make them more dreamlike. That's a feeling I like a lot.
Brian EnoYou work on a piece of music, you put in certain ingredients, and suddenly they react in a way you hadn't predicted. If you're alert to that reaction, that's what you work from. If you're stupid, you try to cancel that reaction out.
A lot of people have such a fixed image of what the product should be that they refuse to allow any deviation. Again and again, they'll force the music into a mold until it goes where they want it to go. This generally leads to quite uninteresting music - or uninteresting anything.
Brian EnoAs soon as you externalize an idea you see facets of it that weren't clear when it was just floating around in your head.
Brian EnoThe problem with thinking about your own past is you forget its genesis and start to feel useless awe towards your earlier self.
Brian EnoI don't have the enthusiasm to push through projects that seem familiar to me.
Brian EnoAdmirers can be a tremendous force for conservatism.
Brian EnoI like talking about ideas. I find them terribly interesting.
Brian EnoCulture is all human behaviour, outside of pure instinct. Everything we do is cultural: gardening, cooking, different fashions, architecture.
What artists (don't?) do a lot, in music in particular, is look at culture in the world. Music doesn't depict something, it's (often) about other music.
Brian EnoThere's nothing worse than a brilliant beginning.
Pablo PicassoI really begin by allowing myself to make a mess, and then seeing if I can get out of it.
If your first move is brilliant, you're in trouble. You don't really know how to follow it; you're frightened of ruining it.
So to make a mess is a good beginning - and I'm quite good at doing that.
Brian EnoTry again, fail again, fail better.
Samuel BecketI want to make things that put me in the position of innocence, that recreate the feeling of innocence in you.
Brian EnoI can't duplicate my own successes, because part of the creation of that effect is making something happen that you didn't expect
Brian EnoI like to change speeds is because it does something to the timbre of sound that I like, by bringing upper harmonics into hearing range, by halving the frequency of them.
Brian EnoHaving no silence in music is like having no black or white in a painting.
Brian EnoWith all fashion, what we do is play at being somebody else. We play at inhabiting another kind of world.
I'm role-playing effectively when I'm making fashion choices. I'm also engaging in some kind of game with myself and the rest of the world. I'm entering into some kind of simulator.
I'm saying, "What would it be like to be the kind of person that wears these kinds of glasses?"
Brian EnoYou don't cling to secrets you've told.
You move on, and your work keeps being surprising as a result.
Maybe this approach works best with artists who are easily bored.
Stewart BrandAs a maker you tend to put in twice as much as you need as a listener. It's a symptom of contemporary production. Old records don't have that problem.
With the facilities that you have today, you tend to plug every hole - you put more and more in. But as a listener you're much less demanding... you can take things that are much simpler, much more open, and much slower.
It's often happened that I've made a piece and ended up slowing it down by as much as half.
Brian EnoThings are always least interesting when they're most clear, in a way, when everybody understands what's going on.
I suppose the quality I've always liked in music is the sense of being baffled... "God, I like this, but I don't know why!"
I suppose one of the reasons one becomes a composer is that you want to recreate that thrill for yourself. You want to do something that makes you say "God, where did that come from?"
Brian EnoIt is the very act of "concentrating" on writing music which makes it difficult to do, since ideas normally arise when one is not focused but when one is "open" in some way.
Brian EnoMost studio units - traditionally regarded as simple devices for altering or modifying a set sound - can be employed as instruments in their own right.
Brian EnoIf you had a sign above every studio door saying 'This Studio is a Musical Instrument' it would make such a different approach to recording
Brian EnoThere's a real bogey among rock musicians about talking about music - they seem to think that if you discuss it, the magic dies or something. I disagree.
I think that if you can argue yourself out of doing something, you should.
Anything that's strong enough will stand up to any amount of analysis.
Brian EnoAs soon as I'd made up the shape of the song, I made a plan of it on paper, sketching out all the spaces where I wanted words, and began running through it, just singing whatever came into my head. And every time I hit on a phrase I liked, I'd write it down in its particular place in the framework.
Gradually I'd arrive at a kind of 'found' document made up of half-obscured fragments - and all I then had to do was fill in the blanks by reconstructing what I thought each lyric was about. Automatic writing, in fact.
Brian EnoAll my favourite songs had lyrics which I didn't quite understand.
What I liked about that was that it seemed to be saying something, but it was unspecific. It gave a definite feeling to the song without being a particular statement.
Brian EnoI remember being with my wife's family, who are are quite shy. We started playing Charades, and within 10 minutes people are singing the theme from such-and-such with all the acting that goes with it.
Because they're now in a frame which says, "You're not yourself, you're not responsible." I thought, that's not a bad philosophy of life.
Brian EnoOne of the things I do is cut the language up, so there are breaks in the middle of sentences and so on.
A few words will come out -- space -- another word -- another 6 words -- space -- another 2 words.
So the language really keeps falling apart.
Brian EnoPeople who are not native English speakers often speak English in a much more interesting way than people who are, because they make the words strange again.
If you are used to listening to English spoken by other English people it all just slips by. But suddenly, when you hear a foreigner speaking your own language, they alter the stress on things, they change the relationship, the balance between words. Suddenly they bring the language to life again. And they keep creating new meanings.
Brian EnoLanguage is still where it was in about the 14th century.
I like songs, and I like language, and I like the use of language. But I want it to be done in some original way.
Whoever does the words has a very hard job. That's the sharp edge of the music. Whatever else the music is doing, if there are words there, you know that is going to be the focal point of the music for so many listeners. And you can really fuck it up with words. If they're not good, you can totally wreck the whole thing.
Brian EnoIf you're a director and you want to instruct an actor - you can either say to him 'Okay, now move your arm towards him like that', or you can say to him, 'Imagine who you are meant to be, and who he's meant to be. Now what do you do to him?'.
You see what I mean? It's like going a step further back in the composition process. So, instead of specifying the precise identity of something, you specify the little seed that will create an identity. You don't have to actually write it in its details.
Brian Eno...a combination of instruments that are so recognizable, that come with a huge amount of cultural history, you know, like jazz piano sounds, the ride cymbal, etc.
As soon as you hear those instruments you have some kind of picture of how the music was made.
Within that, I place those things in an electronic landscape, which is completely another world, a world that never belonged to that music.
Brian EnoA friend of mine says that modern music is a form of space travel, because either you're going out into space with the music, into weird new sounds and weird new impossible landscapes. Modern composers...create psychoacoustic spaces that actually don't exist in nature.
So that's one kind of space travel, going outwards. But the other kind, of course, is inner space travel, travelling into the strange new psychological spaces in our souls.
Brian EnoI want to believe that what I make is a good start, a strong place to begin. I then hope that at least it will be better in the user's (listener's) mind than it is in mine.
I want to plant seeds that will grow when they leave me.
If I thought the music was only going to remain as I left it, then why would I want to release it? You release things so that they will grow, and have interesting other lives without you. Just like kids.
Brian EnoSince I have always preferred making plans to executing them, I have gravitated towards situations and systems that, once set into operation, could create music with little or no intervention on my part.
That is to say, I tend towards the roles of the planner and programmer, and then become an audience to the results.
Brian EnoThe fruit takes a long time to ripen, but it falls suddenly.
proverbIf you think of culture as a great big garden, it has to have its compost as well. Lots of people are doing things that are not dramatic or radical or not even particularly interesting; they're just digestive processes. A number of little things are being combined and tried out.
If you think about music in that way, it makes it much easier to accept that there might be lots of things you might not want to hear again. They happen and they pass and they become the compost for something else to grow from.
Brian EnoAvant-garde music is a sort of research music. You're glad someone's done it but you don't necessarily want to listen to it.
It's similar to the way I'm very happy people have gone to the North Pole. It extends my concept of the planet to know it exists, but I don't want to live there, or even go there actually. But it's a boundary condition.
Brian EnoI don't enjoy being pushed while I'm listening. I like music which lets me do my own listening.
John CageEverything I see is something I haven't memorized.
John CageThere was a time at a concert where this young boy and his father were in front of me. Stravinsky was conducting.
The son turned to his father and said, "Dad, that isn't the way it goes." [laughs]
He was unable to listen because of his memory!
John CageTwo different ways of making things: the hard way and the easy way.
The hard way is the way of the individual artist who establishes his own terrain, as it were. The easy way is the way of grace and the way of tradition, where you don't even consider the possibility that you are there to make major innovations - you're there to make 200 parts today.
One of the things I like about gospel music is that it has that same kind of humility, that the people who are singing it are not puckered-brow artists. There's the same freshness and thrill that you see in all kinds of folk arts. People doing something that is shaped by a whole lot of quite unconscious factors, like the limitations of their own vocal range.
Brian EnoSome sound comes so heavily laden with intention that you can't hear it for the intentions.
This is the great problem of lyrics... they always impose something that is so unmysterious.
Brian EnoI haven't yet heard sounds that I didn't enjoy, except when they became too musical.
I have trouble, I think, when music attempts to control me.
John CageAny information which is common, after several repetitions, you cease to hear.
You reject the common information, rather like if you gaze at something for a long time, you'll cease to really see it.
You'll see any aspect of it that's changing, but the static elements you won't see.
Brian EnoThe idea is to produce things that are as strange and mysterious to you as the first music you ever heard.
Brian Eno"That's noise!" some shrieked.
"That's life," Cage shrugged.
John CageLet sounds be themselves rather than vehicles for man-made theories or expression of human sentiments.
John CageWhen I've found that what I'm doing has become pleasing, even to one person, I have redoubled my efforts to find the next step.
John Cage