Ed O'Brien Quotes

I like it when songs develop in some way. Four minutes usually isn't enough time for something to develop musically.

I love traditional music. But in any culture around the world, there is the historic and cultural music and everything that's been passed down and passed down, and hopefully you take that, and then you take it, you know, the next distance, and then somebody else takes it the next distance.

Our music is becoming more mature.

We'll see some simplistic players for a while, who'll then get into more complicated things and evolve with their instruments. This is a cycle that happens over and over again in music.

I think that every band tries to mature their sound through their existence, you know?

A lot of times, when a band finds success with a certain style or sound, they have a really hard time breaking away from that to grow as artists.

Music's cyclical. There's always that next generation that always comes along.

The blues is the foundation for a lot of things. Things have branched off. It's cool how music grows, but the foundation is always there. It's not going anywhere. The blues is always going to be relevant.

But I listen to live recordings of things that I did back in the '70s and then how I've done things since. And there's no doubt about it: if I compare the two, it's like chalk and cheese.

The first record was basically a quick, fast record. The second record, we were going for more of a poppier sound - like a heavy pop sound. For 'Rocket to Russia,' we'd sort of reached our pinnacle. We'd gotten really good at what we were doing, so that's like my favorite record - that's a really good record. It's just great from beginning to end.

Presenting the American songbook as a living, breathing entity that's expanding all the time is very important.

I think that the only goals that we try to set for ourselves is to evolve musically.

Music needs to move forward.

Younger players in this music often turn out to be middle aged; it is not a young music.

I've seen and learned enough to keep my music fresh and spread out.

I do not think that music keeps evolving. It evolved through Bach; since then, in my humble opinion, all the innovations added nothing.

I'm proud that with 'Bright Eyes' we've always experimented and tried to make a different record every time out.

I feel like bands should be growing, living, functioning entities and to crystallize a band into a single album, and for that to be a touchstone - I understand it from a fan's perspective but I also feel like it's a little bit misleading in terms of the way bands actually function.

Generational change within a genre is hard to parse while it's happening. Only in retrospect can the passing of the baton from ancestors to progeny be clearly discerned.

Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die.

I think that debut albums are supposed to sound sort of raw. You don't want to record 'Sgt. Pepper's' as your first album, because where do you go from there?

Most good things happen with time; especially music, which needs time to breathe and to find its own way.

You know, songs often have a very coloured past. They might have something about them but it still doesn't work, so someone else adds a bit, and someone else adds a bit so perhaps one day I'll know its full history.

When Kenny first came to me, I think he was thinking of making a nice little folk record, but in my opinion, folk music had come to an end and I felt he needed to go to the next step, the next generation.

I always think it's important to choose your initial theme very carefully because you're going to be married to it for a long time. You might have to generate an hour's worth of music from a very short, little piece of theme.