David Bryan Quotes

'Evita' was four pieces of slick paper and a record album. It's the most scary, to sit down and dictate a musical scene by scene. It was a musical unlike anything I'd ever seen before myself.

When I'm a part of someone else's creative process, it's all about facilitating their ideas and hopefully bringing their perspective and making it a part of a song.

It's funny, because what happens to me when I read a script, when something grabs hold of me, I start getting these flashes of people or places or things or images.

If you're going to make a musical, don't cartoon it from the play. Make it better than the play. Have a reason for making it sing.

I grew up at the piano, and I longed to write musicals.

It's great being an actor and being part of a play or a film where there's usually quite a big group of people who are collaborating, and your job is really to fit in and share that energy. With music, because I write the songs, it's a broader, more abstract process.

I'm a director's actor, and I surrender myself to the vision and the process. I think nothing else matters then.

I don't find writing for the theater that different from writing a rock song.

I think about everything first. I think about the scenario: the story and the characters, what I'm trying to say and I'll think about that for a couple of days until it's all locked in and then when I get to an instrument it'll just fall out. But the song's kind of all ready there in my head.

I'm looking for challenges, and as always, what matters is the script, the character and the director.

I shoot people in a way that makes the audience feel equal to them. And it's hard to express and it's hard to execute but I think it works on every level - the choice of the material the choice of the actor, my relationship with the actor, and so on.

But mostly, I wrote songs and Viv wrote songs.

Music runs through everything I do - I even think musically; even when I was acting, but, especially, when I am directing. Directing is very musical.

I really don't want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged.

When you have a script, and you're discussing what it can be, and who going to play what role, that's a kind of like a fantasy football game. You can imagine these different dream teams interpreting these characters that only exist in your head.

I find it easier to play someone who is so far from me because you create someone - you build this person based on the story and the script, with the director.

When I'm writing a song, I try to be the character.

The writer creates the role on the page and then the actor takes it and makes it their own.

As an actor you have to bring to the table your creative input. But when a director like Ridley Scott says I want you to do this this way, you know when he gets to the editing room he has a reason for it. It's like watching a masterpiece.

If one wants to go on living, one must evolve. Before, when we composed, we would start by a series of music themes. Once created, we would hire writers and lyricists to make up the text and the story line. I was the first to do this backwards with 'Man of La Mancha.'

I like to oversee what I do, so I have a hand in writing my songs. I also have people there to help me with my vision.

Every time I get up in the morning, melodies occur to me and I start trying to shape lyrics to melodies.

I spend a lot of time working by myself developing songs, but I really need some other counterpart to help me pull it all together, because you go nuts working if I had to finish an entire project all within my own head.

I never dreamed that the little ditties I wrote about annoying customers or bagel recipes would turn into a full-length musical comedy. But a very wise person told me to 'write what you know'. So I did.

Ideas are really what interest me in producing a band, if I can bring something productive to the project.