Neil Innes Quotes

If you're going to write a song, try to get together with a collaborator because it's better to write with collaborators.

I pretty much started the lyrics and I hit a roadblock and I think Kerry finished them up. Then I came back and did the ending part. The whole 'Raining Blood.' That part. But it pretty much came together easy. It's a short song.

Keith Richards has some sort of quote that says 'it takes two people to write a song,' and I'm of that school of thought, too.

To outsiders it probably seems like splitting hairs, but to me, Bright Eyes is a simply the collaboration between myself and Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott. What you hear is definitely the sum of all our ideas and represents all three of us. But I still write the songs myself.

It's different for every song. But for 'Say Something,' I think it was Chad who had an idea on guitar, and I had an idea on piano for different songs, and we just married them together. We bounce things off each other constantly and kind of massage all these ideas into a three and a half minute pop song.

Each one of us had a little story to tell and each recording was based on that. Lou played all of the music but we both sort of kicked around some cords during the writing phase.

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.

We all write the music, and then Mark and Tom write the lyrics.

I love song writing, so I'm always happy to write for other musicians.

A lot of times Mick will play me different things, or I'll listen to a cassette, and out of twenty ideas or whatever, I'll find two or three that are just blowing me away, and we'll start working on them right away.

When we write, we complement each other. We wrote six songs, Barry and I, while Robin was ill during the American tour, and they were terrible until Robin came back, and then everything worked out.

It's not like I'm writing full songs or full parts and setting it aside for Slash because, generally, I like him to make the first move and hear where he's coming from and what his concepts are, and then I build from there.

In some ways, it's more rewarding to hear someone interpret a piece of music that you're a part of.

If I ever do meet John Mayer and we end up in the studio, hopefully he'll bring the guitar, and I'll make a beat to it or something.

The way Beyonce works, the song is a jigsaw piece and then she will piece various elements.

In the 1990s music was a beautiful collaborative process between the composer, lyricist and director. They would exchange ideas and magic used to happen.

If you wanna write a song, ask a guitar

I'm creating songs. I do it most of the time, in the car or in the house.

Any film, or to me any creative endeavour, no matter who you're working with, is, in many cases, a wonderful experience.

I write my music.

Artie is a singer, and I'm a writer and player and a singer. We didn't work together on a creative level and prepare the songs. I did that.

Writing music is not so much inspiration as hard work.

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.

But then you have to write a song, so at that point, I picked up the reins and started to write lyrics.

I'll sit around and play my guitar; that's how I write tunes.