Jonny Greenwood Quotes

Growing up, I was inspired by The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Damian Rice was a huge influence for me musically.

I heard Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, and that was it. I didn't ever want to be anything else. I just started banging away and semi-studied classical music at the Royal Academy of Music but sort of half-heartedly.

When I got out of the Nazz, I had it in my mind that simply to be eclectic was an important aspect of making music. It was something that I derived from The Beatles.

I love... different kinds of music. I like classical music and pop music. I like alternative, and I like rap, hip-hop, and I kind of collected all these things that I love, and they infused my sensibilities, and I just wanted to sing because it felt like it needed to come out of me.

I love Cher Lloyd's music. I didn't actually hear her music as I was creating my own, but it's cool that we have styles that are considered to be similar.

My voice is a combination of how I grew up and what I was listening to growing up. I like a lot of different kinds of music and am always being inspired in different ways by different artists for different reasons.

Right now, musically I'm inspired by everyday people.

I'm a big fan of cultural music, and that's how I try to expand my playing, by listening to music that is not conventionally American.

I love classical. I have a lot of, like, Bach and Mozart and stuff. Then you flip on over, and I've got, like, Kanye West and, you know, just a bunch of - I am very eclectic. I love every sort of music.

When I was growing up, music was music and there were no genres. We didn't look at it as country music. Popular music in Tuskegee was country music. So I didn't know it in categories. It was the radio.

I don't get my inspiration from a specific source. It's more like if you listen to a good tune, it gives me inspiration to write a better tune.

In the range of music that we play - roughly 300 years' worth-there really are more similarities than differences.

If you want to find the source of much of the music of modern day Russia, you will find it in the incredible compositions of that crazed lunatic Berlioz.

When my dad played me 'Walking Man,' I heard those chord changes and that melody, it completely blew me away. Maybe you wouldn't really hear the James Taylor influences in my music, but they're definitely buried in there.

I had a very thorough grounding in music; I'd grown up around songs. My parents listened to a lot of music. My dad was majorly into jazz, which was absolutely a big influence on me, even if it was more subconsciously as a kid.

I listened to Pablo Casals, which was a big change for me. Without hearing Casals, I would never have advanced as I did.

A well-rounded performer will listen to all kinds of music. I like classical, Middle Eastern, and rock a lot.

I was raised on pop music.

I grew up listening to everything. And rock and roll has always been a big, big part of it - as big a part of what I do as any other type of music.

I was never attracted to the pop world. I listen to music that is pop sometimes. But I've never thought, 'Oh, I need to work with Ne-Yo now.' It's never really been my thing.

Copland was one of the first American composers to forge a truly modern style of American classical music while also making use of American popular music - including jazz.

I've always listened to music while I write, but none of my work has been so directly impacted by a song as my new novel, 'So Cold the River,' for which the brilliant strings piece 'Short Trip Home,' composed by Edgar Meyer and featuring the incredible Joshua Bell on violin, inspired much of the story.

When I'm actually creating music, I try not to listen to the hip-hop records that are going on, because I think, subconsciously, we steal from each other.

The first music I was exposed to was Stravinsky and I loved it but I don't remember it.

What I'm doing is basically the same as Bob Dylan did with folk songs and Woody Guthrie songs, the same as folk music's always done. I'm not going to sing about ploughing, but I'll write a song that sounds like it should be about ploughing.