Quotes & Sayings About Music The Beatles

I would have liked the Beatles never to have broken up. I wanted to get us back on the road doing small places, then move up to our previous form and then go and play. Just make music, and whatever else there was would be secondary. — Paul McCartney

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

My life with the Beatles had become a trap ... I always remember to thank Jesus for the end of my touring days; if I hadn't said that the Beatles were 'bigger than Jesus' and upset the very Christian Ku Klux Klan, well, Lord, I might still be up there with all the other performing fleas! God bless America. Thank you, Jesus. — John Lennon

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

My big love was the Beatles. I was more into music. — Gary Oldman

Obviously the people that I admired, like the Beatles, were really into rock'n'roll, but it was already a little past rock'n'roll when I started listening and making my own choices about music. — Elvis Costello

'The Beatles' did whatever they wanted. They were a collection of influences adapted to songs they wanted to write. George Harrison was instrumental in bringing in Indian music. Paul McCartney was a huge Little Richard fan. John Lennon was into minimalist aggressive rock. — Chris Cornell

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

When John Lennon left the Beatles and started making music with Yoko Ono, many people scoffed at the idea. How could this talented man with so many hit songs give it all up? Well, we all know it was love, but beyond that, it was a leap of faith to try something new. — Ashley Bryan

He's a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody.
Doesn't have a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to,
Isn't he a bit like you and me? — The Beatles

The Beatles were just the beginning of everything music could be, just like the Stones I was Rolling along like a ship lost out on the sea. — David Allan Coe

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

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

People think the Beatles know what's going on. We don't. We're just doing it. — John Lennon

I grew up listening to most of my parents' music like The Beatles and ABBA and all that stuff. — Tammin Sursok

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

'The Whale' was in the category of so-called serious music, and yet it brings together a wide series of musical styles. It was influenced by people such as The Beatles, the spirit of the times, and I think 'The Whale' certainly had a pop element to it. — John Tavener

Critics and fans use the music of their youth as reference points. For years, people seriously wondered who "the next Beatles" were going to be, and classic rock bands were the de facto yardstick for rock quality. — Michael Azerrad

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

I am not the Beatles. I'm me. Paul isn't the Beatles ... The Beatles are the Beatles. Separately, they are separate. — 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

Also, right at that particular time in the music business, because of people like the Beatles, people began owning their own publishing. I'll just say this really quickly - they used to divide the money for the music that was written in two, just equal halves. — Jackson Browne

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

We always had a guitar at home, but it wasn't until I was 14 when I picked it up myself when my father handed me these sheets of music of the Beatles and some other classics. That's where I learned all the chords and learned how to play and sing at the same time. — Jose Gonzalez

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

The '60s in London obviously brought about the explosion of music, the 'Beatles' especially, and then the 'Rolling Stones' and other forms of music, and then fashion and photography and films - kitchen-sink dramas we called them at that time, which was our 'nouvelle vague' in Britain, films that talk about real life. — Charlotte Rampling

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

Growing up, I put a lot of pressure on myself. I felt with The Beatles legacy that there was pressure on me to do music, and while I always loved music and it was always around me at home, I thought about doing other things. — James McCartney

Walter Cronkite was the last newsman everyone trusted in the same way that the Beatles were the last music everyone loved and Marilyn was the last star everyone concurred was worthy of the word. — Steve Erickson

Are you hep to what the Beatles are saying? ... Dig it, they're telling it like it is. They know what's happening in the city; blackie is getting ready. They put the revolution to music ... it's 'Helter-Skelter.' Helter-Skelter is coming down. — Charles Manson

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

I heard Q-Tip on the Jungle Brothers' song 'The Promo.' It was very exciting. It was very new. The music and the culture around hip-hop was evolving. I think there's an emotional quality to their music and there's a vulnerability to the music. For me, A Tribe Called Quest was my Beatles. — Michael Rapaport

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

Life is a musical influence in my experience. But as far as actual music and actual bands, uh, I'll just look at my little collection here. Let's see. Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, U2, The Talking Heads, Prince and the Revolution, Michael Jackson's Thriller was a huge one. — Jeremy Enigk

I suppose, counting back, if the Beatles had been influenced by music in the same length of time ago - you'd have to put that into better English for me, thank you - they would have been like a banjo orchestra. They would have been doing show tunes. — Jonny Greenwood

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

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

I mean, Lady Gaga is trying to be a freak or whatever but that quality of being very meaningly and heartfelt, but also having a sense of humor about it, bands don't do that anymore. Lady Gaga's songs are cheesy. The Beatles weren't cheesy. That's the hardest thing with music: to not be cheesy, but also be meaningful. That's the goal, I think. — Mac DeMarco

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

It's interesting that music in this country ... we sort of sold something to America with The Beatles and they sold something back. And we've never been afraid to embrace American style rock 'n' roll and make it our own over here. — Ricky Gervais

It's nearly redundant to enumerate the reasons The Beatles are important. There are probably different reasons why The Beatles are important to a musician like myself and to the millions of Beatles fans who just enjoy listening to the music. — Todd Rundgren

Downloadable music is the biggest musical phenomenon since the Beatles, and the music industry is slow to come to grips with that. — Chuck D

I play guitar and I love the Beatles and melodic music. — Stephen Dorff

My dad is a huge folk music fan, so growing up, there were always records playing in my house. Carole King, James Taylor, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles - I grew up with this music, and I was aware of how special this music was to a lot of people. — Jake Epstein

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

The tax incentives are things the music business can emulate. If I own Yesterday by the Beatles and I go to a bank and try to borrow $10,000 and use that song as collateral, they wouldn't know what to do. They would run me out of the bank. Whereas if we get specialized people who know how to appraise the value of intellectual property like songs, catalogs and master recordings, they know how to put some type of value on it. They have this in Nashville and Los Angeles. New Orleans is just starting to get it. — Chris Thomas King

If you want to know about the Sixties, play the music of The Beatles. — Aaron Copland

The sun is up, the sky is blue
It's beautiful, and so are you — John Lennon

None of it mattered, because there was music. — Erin Entrada Kelly

Paul Hicks is the only guy The Beatles will allow to arrange, mix and engineer their music, so he did the Cirque du Soleil 'Love' show. — Richard LaGravenese

One day at the library I found a stack of record albums. I was hoping I'd find ta Beatles album, but it was all classical music so I reached for the first name I knew, Beethoven. I checked it out his Sixth Symphony and walked home. I didn't own a record player and I don't know why I took it out. I had Beethoven's Sixth Symphony but nothing to play it on. — John William Tuohy

The whole thing died in my mind long before the rumpus started. We used to believe the Beatles myth just as much as the public and we were in love with them just the same way. But we were four individuals who eventually recovered our individualities after being submerged in a myth. — John Lennon

Paul looks like he'd rather just go home and make out in the kitchen; I would agree, except that I know my Dad is likely to be in there with his laptop, listening to the Beatles music as he catches up on all the Facebook "in memoriam" posts in his honor. Total mood-killer. — Claudia Gray

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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'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

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

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

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

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

If you look at the history of popular music, the most successful musicians have started out being really marginal and esoteric. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Madonna. Prince. Bruce Springsteen. Fleetwood Mac. David Bowie. Public Enemy. Nirvana. — Moby

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

My music was typically continental - nothing like, say, The Beatles. — Giorgio Moroder

Do not trust people who call themselves musicians or record collectors who say that they don't like Bob Dylan or the Beatles. They do not love music if those words come out of their mouths. — Jack White

I love that Euro-pop dance music, but with girl power. I also listen to Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan. I have a Beatles song tattooed on my foot. I'm all over the place. — Hilary Duff

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

Asleep by the Smiths
Vapour Trail by Ride
Scarborough Fair by Simon & Garfunkel
A Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harum
Dear Prudence by the Beatles
Gypsy by Suzanne Vega
Nights in White Satin by the Moody Blues
Daydream by Smashing Pumpkins
Dusk by Genesis (before Phil Collins was even in the band!)
MLK by U2
Blackbird by the Beatles
Landslide by Fleetwood Mac
Asleep by the Smiths (again!)
-Charlie's mixtape — Stephen Chbosky

The big turning point, really, was the Beatles' influence on American folk music, and then Roger took it to the next step, and then along came the Lovin' Spoonful and everybody else. — Barry McGuire

I grew up listening to pop; I grew up listening to '60s pop music, the Beatles, the Monkees, Herman's Hermits and all that stuff. So I had a very strong background of listening to great pop music. — Jane Wiedlin

My parents were big music fans, and my dad plays music, so I grew up with Madonna, Frank Zappa, the Beatles, Alice In Chains ... it was all over the place. I had a Third Eye Blind record, but I also had Korn, Courtney Love, and Shania Twain. — Madi Diaz

Ringo: 'I do get emotional when I think back about those times. My make-up is emotional. I'm an emotional human being. I'm very sensitive and it took me till I was forty-eight to realize that was the problem! We were honest with each other and we were honest about the music. The music was positive. It was positive in love. They did write - we all wrote - about other things, but the basic Beatles message was Love. — Ringo Starr

Their work is timeless. It transcends the bubblegum pap that passes for music now. A Beatles song is a flawlessly executed kata. Anything else is simply wrestling in Jell-O, he returned with disdain. — Rob Thurman

When punk came along, I found my generation's music. I grew up listening to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd, 'cause that was what got played in the house. But when I first saw the Stranglers, I thought, 'This is it.' — Robert Smith

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

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

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

Life goes on, brah! — The Beatles

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