Quotes & Sayings About Music From The Beatles

I grew up loving classic rock music - The Beatles, The Rolling Stones - and then one day I heard 'Baby One More Time' on the radio and I thought 'What is this?' I was eight and it changed my life. — Sara Paxton

Somebody said to me, 'But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.' That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, 'Now, let's write a swimming pool. — Paul McCartney

You see Michelangelo and Picasso and you read literature. I had some innate inchoate yearning for that, but I never really saw where I would fit in. That's called art. And then something happened to pop music, which is that it became art under the hand of the Beatles, the Stones, and Bob Dylan and some other people. — David Chase

I think the music reflects the state that the society is in. It doesn't suggest the state. I think the poets and musicians and artists are of the age - not only do they lead the age on, but they also reflect that age. [ ... ] Like The Beatles. We came out of Liverpool and we reflected our background and we reflected our thoughts in what we sang, and that's all people are doing. — John Lennon

The interesting thing about the Beatles was: The music was one thing, but we kind of symbolized a certain kind of freedom at a time when people of our generation were just growing up and just becoming adults. — Paul McCartney

Oh, I think country has changed tremendously. I think country has totally changed. Country music when I was a kid was Hank Williams. If you put Hank and Elvis together, there wasn't that musical difference. But as the Beatles showed up and the English invasion, I think country music got pretty far away from rock n' roll. — John Mellencamp

I've bought clothes based on record covers. Particularly from the formative music that turned me onto it in the first place when I was a kid, with the Beatles and the Small Faces. A lot of those Sixties soul artists were in really sharp sharkskin or mohair suits, and Motown artists looked amazing. — Paul Weller

All the lonely people, where do they all come from? — The Beatles

I liked a lot of the things other people liked - Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Van Halen, AC/DC - but if I compared it to my dad's music, there just seemed to be elements missing. — Dweezil Zappa

Sometimes I'll listen to a little old Van Halen, or some Beatles, Zeppelin stuff, classical music ... I like a lot of different things. — Eric Carr

In my fiction, there's a lot that's borrowed from music. It's never like I'm taking a lyric, but more the mood of a particular song. 'The Boy Detective Fails' was like listening to 'Eleanor Rigby' by The Beatles, this very melancholy-but-poppy song. — Joe Meno

The Beatles have a deeper appreciation of all music. There's a humor, there's a Broadway sense, and later on, the Indian stuff came in. The Beatles were always taking in stuff and filtering stuff out to us. There's such a classical sense of arrangement, and their harmonies-what the Beatles did vocally is amazing. — Jimmy Vivino

Both the Beatles and The Rolling Stones broke on the music scene the summer I was in England. I can vividly remember hearing She Loves You in August 1963. — Gordon Lightfoot

Without Jimmy Dean, the Beatles never would have existed. — John Lennon

When I was a kid, I went through a lot of musical phases, and one was when I'd learn everything that The Beatles ever recorded. After I started drums, I fell in love with their music so much that I just wanted to learn everything. — Eric Carr

A hundred years from now, people will listen to the music of the Beatles the same way we listen to Mozart. — Paul McCartney

I didn't know much about him, and I wasn't a big country music fan. I listened to the Beatles and David Bowie, so I didn't know a lot about him. — Joaquin Phoenix

The great music for so many artists - the Beatles, the Rolling Stones - was always at the moment when they were closest to pop. It would be easy for U2 to go off and have a concept album, but I want us to stay in the pop fray. — Bono

And I like Strauss and Mozart and all that, but the priceless gift that African Americans gave the world when they were still in slavery was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like us at least a little bit. That specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues. All pop music today-jazz, swing, be-bop, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Stones, rock and roll, hip hop and on and on- is derived from the blues. — Kurt Vonnegut

I come from a generation that was surrounded by popular music, but I don't know if anybody's ever going to move the ball forward as far and as fast as the Beatles did. — Steven Soderbergh

I think I'm supposed to "take a sad song and make it better," but that's beyond my musical ability — Sophia Bennett

At 18, I moved to L.A. with my heavy metal band Avant Garde, which was very much influenced by Metallica. At 19, I got a job at Tower Records, and everything started to change very quickly. I started listening to the Velvet Underground, Pixies, early Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and also earlier music like the Beatles. — Rivers Cuomo

I liked The Beatles a lot when I was growing up. — Damien Hirst

The Beatles did their best cover work on Little Richard's 'Long Tall Sally' and music influenced by Richard, such as Larry Williams's 'Dizzy Miss Lizzie.' — Jon Landau

A billion hours ago, human life appeared on earth. A billion minutes ago, Christianity emerged. A billion seconds ago, the Beatles changed music. A billion Coca-Colas ago was yesterday morning. - Robert Goizueta, chief executive of the Coca-Cola Company, April 1997 — Tom Standage

You see, I think drugs have done some good things for us. I really do. And if you don't believe drugs have done good things for us, do me a favor. Go home tonight. Take all your albums, all your tapes and all your CDs and burn them. 'Cause you know what, the musicians that made all that great music that's enhanced your lives throughout the years were rrreal fucking high on drugs. The Beatles were so fucking high they let Ringo sing a few tunes. — Bill Hicks

Life goes on, brah! — The Beatles

You certainly don't hear any country music on pop radio today. But for a while you did, and it was a lovely thing to have all the different genres of music cohabitating the Top 40 - the folk sound, The Beatles, the British sound, the Motown sounds, that kind of light country - it was a welcome relief after a few hard rock records. Everyone was sharing the airwaves, and I think it was a beautiful time for American music. — Jimmy Webb

I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird. — Paul McCartney

The Beatles changed music forever. They took rock n' roll from a medium that was about cars and girls and gave it context, interesting chord changes and true musicianship. — Bob Spitz

Israel was thinking of warm beer, and muffins, and Wensleydale cheese, and Wallace and Gromit, and the music of Elgar, and the Clash, and the Beatles, and Jarvis Cocker, and the white cliffs of Dover, and Big Bend, and the West End, and Stonehenge, and Alton Towers, and the Last Night of the Proms, and Glastonbury, and William Hogarth, and William Blake, and Just William, and Winston Churchill, and the North Circular Road, and Grodzinski's for coffee, and rubbish, and potholes, and a slice of Stilton and a pickled onion, and George Orwell. And Gloria, of course. He was almost home to Gloria. G-L-O-R-I-A. — Ian Sansom

The muse of music isn't just from Greek mythology, but living in people like the Beatles, Chuck Berry, Anita Baker, Aretha Franklin. — Ernie Isley

We've always had a lot of different influences and we've always liked catchy music from the Beatles to Cheap Trick to Elvis Costello. — Chuck Comeau

When I got out of the Nazz, I had it in my mind that simply to be eclectic was an important aspect of making music. It was something that I derived from The Beatles. — Todd Rundgren

I fell into hip-hop right from the beginning. I was a teenager in the '60s, so I was putting all my pocket money into buying LPs. I followed the ascent of the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and Stevie Wonder. I followed popular music very closely, and I've never stopped. — Simon De Pury

I stream this radio station, Radio Nova, that's based in Paris. They curate a beautiful set that's really all over the place - they'll play blues or some West African music, then A Tribe Called Quest, then funk from Ethiopia, then James Brown, and then the Beatles. It's an amazing mix. — Zoe Kravitz

From a very young age, music was very much in my house. I would sit with my mom, with the old LPs, listening to The Beatles and Carly Simon and Lionel Richie. The old LPs used to have the lyrics. From there, I would put on dance and music displays for my family, just to entertain them and make people laugh and smile. — Lara Pulver

The Beatles and Ray Charles were in the same charts together, and that was just called pop music - it wasn't called soul or rock. The best pop music just stands out as something that's just original, and I think it should all be called pop again. — Eliza Doolittle

I just got into the Beatles a couple of years ago, you know, I like it. — Ziggy Marley

In 1963, before the Beatles burst on the scene, a brief but powerful infatuation with folk music gripped America. The TV show that came along at the right time to capitalize on the craze was Hootenanny, featuring such Caucasian interpreters of the black experience as the Chad Mitchell Trio and the New Christy Minstrels. (Perceived commie Caucasians like Pete Seeger and Joan Baez were not invited to perform.) — Stephen King

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that ... I believe in what I do, and I'll say it. — John Lennon

Music is like a psychiatrist. You can tell your guitar things that you can't tell people. And it will answer you with things people can't tell you. — Paul McCartney

The first time I actually heard any of the Beatles' music it was in a car. I think it was the, the B side of their first record. I think it was "I Want to ... I Want to Hold Your Hand". And it, it really sounded different to me. And it sounded a bit like trouble, like this is something new 'cause I very rarely paid any attention to what anyone else was doing. — Jeff Barry

The Beatles came and everybody forgot about everything else. That was a friendly, together, hip interpersonal music, introducing electric sustain, and it captured the imagination of everybody. So improvising, even though it was in a very rich period in terms of impact on the public, the '6Os were very hard times on players financially. — Paul Bley

That culture, of looking at catchy music as a negative thing, is weird. It has nothing to do with me, or the music I was into growing up. The Stones and the Beatles only tried to write hits. Every Motown song, every Credence Clearwater song - they were trying to write hits. — Dan Auerbach

Take just one well-known event: The Beatles' 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. This has been depicted with astonishing regularity as a pivotal cultural moment; in fact an entire movie -- I Wanna Hold Your Hand -- was built around it. And that Sullivan episode was indeed a major event in popular culture. But did you know that in 1961, 26 million people watched a CBS live broadcast of the first performance of a new symphony by classical composer Aaron Copland? Moreover, with all the attention that sixties rock groups receive, it may come as a surprise to learn that My Fair Lady was Columbia Records' biggest-selling album before the 1970s, beating out those of sixties icons Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and The Byrds. — Jonathan Leaf

I'd always wanted to work in the studio and experiment with sounds. Things that I'm really influenced by and that I love are like The Beatles and Radiohead, and all those records by bands whose music is really involved. — Regina Spektor

I grew up in the church, with traditional hymns, but at the same time I was beginning to listen to pop music, the mid-60s, The Beatles, which had just as much influence on me as those hymns did. Then the hippy stuff like Pink Floyd started to raise questions about how I lived my life and the world in which I lived. — Alan Green

My house was full of music. My main memories are of the record player at home: it was all Beatles and Rolling Stones, and we danced around the living room; that started me off on instruments, and I've done nothing else ever since. — Steven Price

England has had a lot of really bad periods of music, but it's had several amazing periods where they've found an incredible balance, not just between music that's a rather complex and also pretty direct. Like the Beatles. — Tod Machover

Composers are influenced by all the important music in their lives - and I suppose that since radio started playing popular music, that's as likely to be The Beatles or Aphex Twin as it is to be Verdi or Ravel. — Jonny Greenwood

I'm definitely obsessed about artists and the type of music and the playing and the tone and all that kind of thing - I'm not obsessed about what the best Beatles album is. I just think if The Beatles are great, they're great. — Paul Weller

No one can get reall drunk on a novle or a painting, but who can help getting drunk on Beethoven's night, Bartok's Sonata for two Pianos and percussion or the Beatles' White Album? He loved mozart as much as rock.
He considered music a liberating force, it liberated him from lonliness, introversion, the dust of the library; it opened the door of hi body and allowed his soul to step out into the world to make friends, He loved to dance an regretted that Sabina did not share his passion
pg 92-93 — Milan Kundera

I grew up listening to the Beatles and being an ardent Beatles fan when I was in third grade all the way to adulthood, and listening to all kinds of music that came to us either at the flea market or in our living rooms or on the 'Ed Sullivan' show - all these places we were influenced by. — Sandra Cisneros

Lady Madonna lying on the bed
Listen to the music playing in your head. — Paul McCartney

I don't hate pop music. I liked the Beatles, but then, I knew them. — John Tavener

Anyone who lives in her own world is crazy. Like schizophrenics, psychopaths, maniacs. I mean people who are different from others.'
Like you?'
On the other hand,' Zedka continued, pretending not to have heard the remark, 'you have Einstein, saying that there was no time or space, just a combination of the two. Or Columbus, insisting that on the other side of the world lay not an abyss but a continent. Or Edmund Hillary, convinced that a man could reach the top of Everest. Or the Beatles, who created an entirely different sort of music and dressed like people from another time. Those people
and thousands of others
all lived in their own world. — Paulo Coelho

But times changed, and I changed, and I didn't feel that way anymore. The Beatles were happening. I think that was probably the main thing. The Beatles just changed the whole world of music. — Barry McGuire

The best pop music is the songs that a group of people can dance to, but you can also listen to in your bed and cry. That's something obviously that The Beatles started and ... so having that darkness there opens another door. — Andrew Dost

It is inescapable that Ringo was the catalyst for the others. He certainly completed the jigsaw and The Beatles, with Ringo, became a magnet for the great camera artists of the world, a target for the jaded, lately hostile eyes of people who had hardly known that popular music existed. — Brian Epstein

I'm sort of a traditionalist usually. I love old soul music and The Beatles; I realized I was sort of trying to make music sometimes that fit into an era that's gone. — Eric Hutchinson

I vaguely remember my schooldays. They were what was going on in the background while I was trying to listen to the Beatles. — Douglas Adams