Jon Landau Quotes

As for the way we play, we are as much like the Beatles as any American Jazz group is like any other.

I really consider myself fortunate to have been of age during the musical revolution that came in the form of the Beatles. People don't realize that previous to the Beatles, there really was no such thing as an album artist. People made singles. Then they would put a bunch of those singles together and call it an album. And that was it.

I love originating shows and originating songs - there is nothing better than being the first one to get to do a song.

I love all Yes music and love to play it live, but I'm most interested in making new music with Yes.

I didn't write any music at all, and then, I remember Jon Anderson being very insistent saying that there were two kinds of musicians: the ones who wrote music and the ones who didn't.

I like the Beatles. They're at the core of my musicality. And John Lennon's my spiritual father.

Like all teenagers in the early '60s, I put down my hockey stick when the Beatles got big and picked up a guitar. We all thought we'd be rock stars. Then I got into comedy, but I'd always find a way to use my guitar, such as writing songs and doing musical parodies.

I can get a tune out of most things with strings, but I'm not really sure I'm what could be called a musician. I find it fascinating working with people who can play other instruments and sing.

If Mozart were around now he would write a killer rock song.

When I first started drumming, when I was 14 or 15, I started writing songs. I wrote for a couple of years, but when we started 'Radiohead' it became very apparent quite quickly that I just wanted to concentrate on the drumming.

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.

Rock n' roll as a genre is different from pop and hip hop: it is about bands, and that for me suggests brotherhood, family, friendship and community.

We have always wanted to write songs and be experimental in that way.

I think that songwriting changed when groups started spending more time in the studio.

It's very demanding to make up your own music.

Some of those early Kinks songs, we were barely in tune.

We felt like, first and foremost, we were songwriters.

I think the Beatles is one band that, if I'm working on a song arrangement or if I have some idea for a song, and there's a little bit of a Beatles quality to it, I never avoid that. I always will steer into it.

If you listen to Semi-Precious Weapons' last single, 'Aviation High,' you can definitely hear that even in my old band, even in the songs I was writing then, the pop influence really started to take over.

Everybody in Lynyrd Skynyrd loves different styles of music, and our minds are very open when it comes to writing our songs and making the band true to what the band is, but also stepping out and doing something current.

That's what I'd rather be doing more than anything. I love to play and perform and write, record, do whatever - just stay in music.

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

I started playing in my first band when I was 12. I like to date myself by saying I was in a New Age band when it wasn't ironic; it was actually called new wave because it was new.

I think all of The Beatles were from an era when certainly playing was important to them, and they were cutting edge. But for all time, they're master composers.

In all of my years in this business, I've always been part of either a progressive band or a metal band.