Pete Townshend Quotes

Don't worry about what others say about your music. Pursue whatever you are hearing... but if everybody really hates your music maybe you could try some different approaches.

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do, and then just go for it.

The way that I've always gone about making music, the rule of thumb, has just been to make what I love.

Let me explain something about guitar playing. Everyone's got their own character, and that's the thing that's amazed me about guitar playing since the day I first picked it up. Everyone's approach to what can come out of six strings is different from another person, but it's all valid.

One of the mistakes I made was believing that the rock n' roll genre as a genre was much more free than the whole pop or R&B scene.

I think that was the whole idea behind doing the solo record was to be able to do musically whatever I wanted to do.

Tons of musicians who I love are imprisoned by their identity. That can be totally fine because they are so amazing in their technique, but for me, I'm a little too restless for that.

If tomorrow I want to release a rock album or I want to release a bachata album, nobody can tell me anything - why can't I?

I love to play guitar. I've never really been the type of guitar player that goes, 'I'll only play this style of music or that thing.'

I do music because I can just pick up my guitar and sing, and completely satisfy, instant gratification. I don't need a script, I don't people, I don't need anything, cameras, I just have myself and my guitar, or keyboard.

I never excluded any genre on my first record.

One thing that sticks in my mind is that jazz means freedom and openness. It's a music that, although it developed out of the African American experience, speaks more about the human experience than the experience of a particular people.

It's just always been a hobby of ours to make music that makes us happy and excites us when we make it.

My music is mostly for the music. And it gives the liberty to do anything which I want. And nobody limits me to one genre of music. But I learn from life and I try to give back to life, in a way, whether it's the thought of the song or whether it's the approach to the arrangement or anything.

I'm not trying to become a pop artist, and I'm not trying to make sure I stay a country artist. I'm just trying to make sure I make the best music I can, according to my way.

I get very frustrated by this term 'genre exercise.' I mean, what exactly is that? Genre is not really relevant when you are writing a song; hopefully you are doing it to explore something, to create something, and I don't agree that any of my albums are genre exercises.

Your limitations create your sound.

I tend to play in a way that feels natural to me. To me that's authentic for myself. I play by where I'm led by some sense of where I feel I'm supposed to be.

Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.

You know, if Kelly Clarkson wants to do country albums because that's what inspires her, then let her do it. Look at Kanye West or Ludacris... they aren't rappin' and cussin' like they were on their first few albums, so what does that make them? It's all in the eye of the beholder and the listener. We all use our outlet to grow ourself.

I don't want to be held down by genres so much.

So the thing is to put out music for music's sake.

Music is music; you don't have to put a label on it.

I make the kind of music I like.

I found it liberating of necessity to devise my own style and my own tactics and to look for a voice on the instrument because there weren't really any that impacted strongly on me.