Great Musician Quotes & Sayings

If you strive to become a good human being with the qualities of generosity, humility and having reverence for life ... just maybe you'll become a great musician. — Charlie Haden

When talking about writing, I often use the analogy of archaeology. There are these great tunes all around. Your skill as a musician allows you to pick them out without breaking them. — Pat Metheny

I also had a brother who was like me a musician and a composer. A man of great talent, far more gifted than I. He died very young ... he killed himself in the prime of his life. — Gustav Mahler

I've always considered it a great privilege to be a musician, I've never lost sight of that. — Natalie Merchant

I'm a great songwriter, but I'm not the most talented musician. — Noel Gallagher

When you have the opportunity to make music with great musicians, take it. That's it. That's the only reason I need, really. — Joss Stone

Mrs. Jones had invited a great and well-known violinist to entertain at her afternoon tea. When it was all over, everyone crowded around the musician. "I've got to be honest with you," one of the guests said, "I think your performance was absolutely terrible." Hearing his criticism, the hostess interposed: "Don't pay any attention to him. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He only repeats what he hears everyone else say." I'm — John C. Maxwell

music is the great love of the People. If we sing a beautiful song, if we faithfully remember all the words, the People will never abandon us. Without the musician, all life would be loneliness. — Madeleine Thien

That's one of the things about being married to a couple of musicians, I have got great iPods. That's what I was left with
an iPod each. — Pamela Anderson

I knew nothing of the real life of a musician, but I seemed to see myself standing in front of great crowds of people, playing my accordion. — Lawrence Welk

If you are having trouble making a chord, get a book, that is how I learned. There are guitar tuning apps so you can tune your guitar, and just learn how to play along with your records. And it's great to be able to play along with another musician. That is like trial by fire. — Joan Jett

All five hundred boys want to go out with the same ten anorexic girls." She said, "I'm a good musician, but not many guys are looking for a girl that plays great Bach preludes. — Mary Pipher

I want to be taken seriously as the type of musician that plays stuff like an electric rake. I mean, how seriously do you take someone like Spike Jones? They take him pretty seriously - a really good musician who made a great contribution in terms of humor, which is part of what I try to do too. — Eugene Chadbourne

Maybe the idea of being a rockstar or being the one who's recording or playing, sort of doesn't really matter as much anymore, when you're surrounded by great musicians who bring their spirit, their own talent. — Adrian Grenier

I think one of the great moments of my life was when I could write musician on my passport. — Jon Anderson

Well, in order for me to be successful ... In order to be a great artist - musician, actor, painter, whatever - you must be able to be private in public at all times. — Lady Gaga

I'm just lucky to have great parents. My sister's an actress. My brother's a musician. I found it hard growing up in such a ... creatively driven family. I wanted to have this thing to create, myself. — Grace Gummer

When I went off to college, I was expecting to be a concert musician. In music school I heard all of these kids who were just unbelievable. And I understand that you can be very, very good, but there's something that separates very, very good from great, and I knew that I wasn't great. — Condoleezza Rice

You would never hear any song played twice in the same way. The words were retained, but within a certain frame there was great latitude, and the musician could improvise to his heart's content; and the more the variations and combinations, the greater the musician. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

My intention when I came into this industry was to be a musician, not necessarily a recording artist, just a musician in general. And that's the reason I went to college and got my degree, which has been great for me. It's helped me a lot with my career. — Jon Secada

The first impulse of a great number of civilized musicians ... is to protest ourdeclaration that the music in Hungary belongs to the Gypsies. — Franz Liszt

I became a musician because I love music, and that is what has sustained me; it's not because I thought it was a great way to make a living. Music saved my life. — David Sanborn

In order for me to be successful ... In order to be a great artist - musician, actor, painter, whatever - you must be able to be private in public at all times. That is what we do. — Lady Gaga

Kenny Burrell is a great musician and his music has helped to make me what I am today. — Stevie Wonder

Jonathan Kreisberg is a great musician whose playing and writing always tell a story. His formidable technique and intellect never get in the way, but only serve the agenda of the heart. — Joe Locke

My dad wasn't the biggest role model, but he was a great musician and I loved him very much. He was a character. — Randy Houser

Nobody gives a crap if we're great musicians. — Frank Zappa

Not only was he not mad, but he was a musician, and my favorite men had always been musicians or writers or anything that involved the creative process and behaving like tortured artists ... I found financial insecurity a great aphrodisiac. — Marian Keyes

As a musician, I don't have one thing that's "my thing." I like to create, and have a lot of outlets for it. Dustin Hoffman is one of the guys that sets a model for me, because of how good he is at being such different characters. Every time you see DeNiro, he's pretty much DeNiro - great, but DeNiro. Hoffman is different every time, depending on his character. That's how I see myself as a performer. — Chick Corea

If it takes me 10 years to be the musician I want to be, great. — Demi Lovato

This great Mughal Emperor [Akbar] was illiterate; he could neither read nor write. However, that had not stopped Akbar from cultivating the acquaintance of the most learned and cultured poets, authors, musicians, and architects of the time - relying solely on his remarkable memory during conversations with them. — Indu Sundaresan

Every person writes his or her life story similar to how a musician composes music. Author Milan Kundera noted, 'Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of great distress.' Guided by their aesthetic sense of beauty, a person transforms the intentional and fortuitous events of their life into an expressive episodic motif, which artistic creation assumes a permanent place in the composition of his or her conscious mind. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Some musicians are not great technicians, but they give you a rich point of view. — Nathan Milstein

I always had a great appreciation for jazz, but I'm a very pedestrian musician. I get by. I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary. — Tom Waits

When you work with great musicians, they are always a part of you ... their spirits are walking around in me, so they're still here and passing it on to others. — Miles Davis

When I hear a great musician, I can feel his life inside the music. — John McLaughlin

He wasn't a great father. He was a great musician. That's always been a touchy one, and it will be until I can find the answer, but I don't know if there is one. — Julian Lennon

The soul of the great musician can only be expressed in music. — Margaret Fuller

A great musician is just a thief who doesn't get caught — Buddy Rich

Nobody else even approaches the trumpet like [Sweets Edison] does: Never too much and always plenty. He's the greatest trumpet player to play along with singers. He exactly knows how to play with you, how to answer you about what you just sang ... On top of that, he has some great sense of humor, both as a musician and as a man. Every time I see him, I'm laughing so much. Sweets is impeccable and incomparable. — Ella Fitzgerald

I've heard of people stopping their cars, having car wrecks, all kinds of things. But most of the banjo players I know had that moment when they heard Earl Scruggs. So, for me, it transcends the technique. It's the musician in him and his personality, his musical personality, such great taste, such great technique, very, very creative. — Earl Scruggs

I'm a guitar player, really - I mean, first and foremost - I grew up with all that great 1960s music, in terms of growing up, becoming a musician, so it's like first-love stuff; I'm always going to go back to it. — Todd Rundgren

Bob Dylan is quite a songwriter, and a great singer and musician. I won't bother with comparing myself to him, but I will say that I heard his records at a very young age and I still listen to all his records. — Frank Black

My parents were very old school, as were my grandparents who went through the Great Depression and were a big influence on my life. So for them it was very important for me to have a college education and to pursue a normal job that would give me benefits and things like that.
So they were very, very much opposed to me being a musician. They were all pretty horrified. — Anne Boleyn

All my momma's people were very musical. My grandpa, who was the Pentecostal minister, he was a great musician. He played the fiddle, he played the piano. — Dolly Parton

To be honest, I don't necessarily think you have to be an actor to act. You don't have to be a musician to make great music. If it comes along and you put your all into it, the outcome is what's important. — Andre Benjamin

If you're making money people don't think you're playing Jazz. When you're not making money they think you're a great Jazz musician. — Pete Fountain

I haven't done any genealogical exploring myself, though members of my family and also of my husband's family have traced things back. I have a great grandfather on my mother's side who was a musician, and I'd like to know more about his life. — Kim Edwards

From the moment I first heard Steve Laury play,
I knew he was dangerous ... He is an extremely gifted musician who makes great music! We go back 25 years and Steve will always be my dear friend. — Nathan East

You can't make a great musician or a great photographer if the magic isn't there. — Eve Arnold

Yeah, we try to get the best musicians possible, and Justin [Robinson] is a great musician, man, a great player. You must have been surprised to see him out there, then. — Common

I was always funny, but I wasn't a great musician, and I wanted to be a musician way more than I wanted to be a comic. I just didn't think comedians were cool when I was a kid. — Greg Behrendt

The world has lost a great musician who will always be an inspiration to me and those at OBEY GIANT. — Shepard Fairey

Grace Kelly plays with intelligence, wit and feeling. She has a great amount of natural ability and the ability to adapt. That is the hallmark of a first-class jazz musician. — Wynton Marsalis

Genius is original, unique; and in whatever form it may develop itself is the greatest gift that can be given to man, the strongest known link between the material life we have and the spiritual life that we can only guess at. Every great poet, painter, or musician - every inventor or man of science, every fine actor or orator, comes to us as the exponent of something diviner than we know. We cannot understand it, but we feel it, and acknowledge it. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

For the great eras in the history of the development of all the arts have been eras not of increased feeling or enthusiasm in feeling for art, but of new technical improvements primarily and specially. The discovery of marble quarries in the purple ravines of Pentelicus and on the little low-lying hills of the island of Paros gave to the Greeks the opportunity for that intensified vitality of action, that more sensuous and simple humanism, to which the Egyptian sculptor working laboriously in the hard porphyry and rose-coloured granite of the desert could not attain. The splendour of the Venetian school began with the introduction of the new oil medium for painting. The progress in modern music has been due to the invention of new instruments entirely, and in no way to an increased consciousness on the part of the musician of any wider social aim. — Oscar Wilde

It is not a dreamlike state, but the somehow insulated state, that a great musician achieves in a great performance. He's aware of where he is and what he's doing, but his mind is on the playing of the instrument with an internal sense of rightness. — Arnold Palmer

I always loved Bill's contribution to the early Yes albums. Alan later took over from him and did great things but there was something about Bill's concept of the thinking musician that we've never had since Bill left. — Chris Welch

Jay Ashby is simply a great musician! — Paul Simon

I'm a terrible musician. While the band members are great, I'm tolerated and affectionately regarded because I do movies, but if I had to make my living as a musician I would starve. I'm like a Sunday tennis player. — Woody Allen

In ancient times the greatest of the prophets were great musicians. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

The Americans expect great things of me ... If the small Czech nation can have such musicians, they say, why could not they, too, when their country and people is so immense. — Antonin Dvorak

I really had a great time working with 'Modest Mouse,' just because of the people. I loved writing songs with Isaac Brock, and Jeremiah Green is probably my favorite musician that I've worked with. — Johnny Marr

I'm not a very creative person, you know? I'm not really an art person. I'm not a great reader or writer or artist or musician. — Tom Brady

We use important words too frequently and they lose value; for instance, charm and great. An actor or musician often is proclaimedgreat when we really mean he is outstanding. — Eleanor Robson Belmont

I've been collaborating with Ira Schickman on some songs, and there will be many other, great musicians involved. — Chaka Khan

One of the most obvious aspects of the music to people who know jazz is: How does it feel in the swing? These are things that are very subtle and that jazz musician appreciate in a particular way. I appreciate the way Tommy Flanagan swings, the way that Barry Harris swings, the great pulse that Hank Jones and Bill Evans have - end every one of them is different. — Chuck Israels

Well, my paper has asked me to do a series: Lives of the Great Musicians, reading time 2 minutes. — Dodie Smith

A great hang is mandatory. But in all of my years as a traveling musician, on a whole it's been pretty damn magical. There have been a couple duds along the way, but most time, I'm in awe of the guys who want to play on my records. — Shelby Lynne

It's a great thing about being a musician; you don't stop until the day you die, you can improve. So it's a wonderful thing to do. — Marcus Miller

The unchanging Man of history is wonderfully adaptable cloth by his power of endurance and in his capacity for detachment. The fact seems to be that the play of his destiny is too great for his fears and too mysterious for his understanding. Were the trump of the Last Judgement to sound suddenly on a working day the musician at his piano would go on with his performance of Beethoven's Sonata and the cobbler at his stall stick to his last in undisturbed confidence in the virtues of the leather. And with perfect propriety. For what are we to let ourselves be disturbed by an angel's vengeful music too mighty for our ears and too awful for our terrors ? Thus it happens to us to be struck suddenly by the lightning of wrath. The reader will go on reading if the book pleases him and the critic will go on criticizing with that faculty of detachment born perhaps from a sense of infinite littleness and wich is yet the only faculty that seems to assimilate man to the immortal gods. — Joseph Conrad

To have read the greatest works of any great poet, to have beheld or heard the greatest works of any great painter or musician, is a possession added to the best things of life. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

I'm a keen musician. Me and my mates have a great times jamming and recording stuff. We have a great band behind us and have turned my nursery-rhyme songs into quite credible pieces of music. — Tom Felton

Any musician with a slight level of self-awareness can be taught to write a 'good' song. A great song is completely original. It feels as if the performer is the only person who could bring it to life. — Greta Salpeter

He [Benny Carter] is all that every jazz musician the world over wants to be. He's performed 20,000 nights. How many shoes have been shined? How much mascara put on? Rouge? How many of those impossible bowties have been tied? How many love songs have been sung? How many dances have been danced? How many have passed to the sound of his music? It's been said that a man should not be forced to live up to his art. Benny Carter is one of the rare instances when we wonder whether the great art that a man has created can live up to him. — Wynton Marsalis

Although I have guitars all around and I pick themm up occasionally and write a tune and make a record, I don't really see myself as a musician. It may seem a funny thing to say. It's just like, I write lyrics amd I make up songs, but I'm not a great lyricist or songwriter or producer. It's when you put all these things together - that makes me. — George Harrison

When I auditioned for my high school band the band director was excited because my father was known to be a great musician. When he heard me, he said 'Are you sure you're Ellis's son?' — Wynton Marsalis

When I lived in New York, there wasn't as much TV or film around. I got asked to do a couple of indie films, just based on me being from The Smashing Pumpkins and A Perfect Circle. I did a couple of indie movies from Japan and one from Canada, and I thought it was an exciting, fun thing to do. I had a great time doing it, it was just that, in New York, there really wasn't as much. My studio in New York closed, so I moved out to L.A. and just started looking into composing as another thing to do, as a musician. I like it a lot. It's fun and it's a different way of thinking about music. — James Iha

In my view a jazz musician is a great musician. — Michael Parkinson

My intention always has been to arrive at human contact without enforcing authority. A musician, after all, is not a mili- tary officer. What matters most is human contact. The great mys- tery of music making requires real friendship among those who work together. Every member of the orchestra knows I am with him and her in my heart. — Carlo Maria Giulini

I want them to come away with discovering the music inside them. And not thinking about themselves as jazz musicians, but thinking about themselves as good human beings, striving to be a great person and maybe they'll become a great musician. — Charlie Haden

How do I do that preparation [for film]? Just an immersion. I have a musician's, I guess, ear for the sound of the voice but it's also important to me, in the case of [playing] someone who is controversial, to get the outlines of the character right because how they present themselves to the world has a great deal to do with how people feel about them. — Meryl Streep

Be good to people. Be good to every single person you come into contact with. My best friends are great musicians. But more than that, they're great people. — Taylor Swift

See, if you put a musician in a place where he has to do something different from what he does all the time, then he can do that - but he's got to think differently in order to do it. He's got to play above what he knows - far above it. I've always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that's where great art and music happens. — Miles Davis

I knew a lot of my musicians used to take coke. I never saw them. They would hide it from me, so I wasn't really aware of it. Creatively, I don't think it was that great. — Giorgio Moroder

I know a lot of great musicians that don't know they're even great, because mangers try and make them feel belittled like they're not worth a crap. — Jim "Dandy" Mangrum

The way we got Phil Collins for 'Tarzan' was that we heard around the studio that he was looking for a Disney project, and we got him. It seemed like a perfect match. Phil is a great musician. — Kevin Lima

Most true musicians don't do it for the money, they do it because they love it. When I did slam poetry, it was a great way for me to express myself, I loved it. — Jake Holmes

I think my biggest musical hero growing up was probably Ian MacKaye. He set a great example for all of us local musicians. Still, to this day, I see him as the best example of a right-on musician. — Dave Grohl

I listen to all sorts of music, but I'm not musically talented. Everyone expects me to be a good singer or musician, but I really am terrible. I'm a great dancer, though. — Jade Jagger

So Nemerov showed us this picture, which is of Apollo flaying Marcius. You don't think of Apollo as being the sort of person who would skin someone alive. But the story behind it was that there was this guy who was a really great musician, and all the women loved him, and people started saying he was the best musician in the world, so Apollo got jealous and he challenged this guy to a musical dual. They would each play a song and the muses would judge who was the better musician. — Larkin Grimm

We have to be willing to become vulnerable to trust Him if we wish to find security and satisfaction in Him. We have to be willing to let go of what little we have, to gain the great riches and supreme happiness He has to offer. And we have to let Him have the helm if we wish to hear the sweeter song. The "something better" is found in emptying yourself, surrendering to his lead, letting go of your life and all you hold dear, and entrusting everything to Him. Because in doing that, you will be tenderly embraced by the sweetest Musician in all the universe and receive your own personal concert. [see Luke 9:23] — Eric Ludy

You can't fake this music. You might be a great singer or a great musician but, in the need, that's got nothing to do with it. It's how you connect to the songs and to the history behind them. — Etta James

The room was filled with deep, raucous sighs, sudden sobs, silent floods of tears. The horrified musician stopped,and going up to the man whose bliss was expressing itself most noisily, he asked him if he was in great pain and what would help to relieve it. But the sick man, his eyes gleaming ecstatically, looked at him with unspeakable contempt. Fancy wanting to save a man sick with too much life, sick with joy! — Charles Baudelaire

I'm more of an actor than a musician. I've made a little name for myself as an actor, but I also front this band. We have some great players out here, and we've found a little niche with L.A. Hootenanny. — Todd Lowe

Dude, if you want to be a great musician, you have to try heroin. You'll see. It's like being back in the womb. — Dave Mustaine

He led quite a great life, ... He was an Old Testament figure railing against the establishment - a Jewish guy from New York who became a Buddhist, a poet, a musician. — Tom Hayden

To be a musician is a great privilege but it is also a very great responsibility. One must think that to be a musician is a gift - a gift from Nature. There is no great merit in us except in loving this gift with respect and devotion and doing everything possible to honor that gift by work and more work. We must work with conviction and humility, searching for beauty, simplicity, and the Truth. And it is for us musicians to do all in our power for a better world. Music must carry the message of beauty, of love and of peace. — Pablo Casals

Therefore it is to a practical mysticism that the practical man is here invited: to a training of his latent faculties, a bracing and brightening of his languid consciousness, an emancipation from the fetters of appearance, a turning of his attention to new levels of the world. Thus he may become aware of the universe which the spiritual artist is always trying to disclose to the race. This amount of mystical perception - this "ordinary contemplation," as the specialists call it - is possible to all men: without it, they are not wholly conscious, nor wholly alive. It is a natural human activity, no more involving the great powers and sublime experiences of the mystical saints and philosophers than the ordinary enjoyment of music involves the special creative powers of the great musician. — Evelyn Underhill

I feel very honored to be playing with Bill Pierce. He's such a great musician. — Kevin Eubanks