John Grant Quotes

I came up playing in both punk rock bands and hip-hop bands, and I found a more universal way of reaching people, especially with music that has a message to it.

When you keep the caliber of musicians very high in the band, people are going to come and go. Some of them will be people who have to try various things, it's natural.

I'd written songs with lots of people, from one spectrum to the other.

I love hip-hop and soul, but I desperately want to challenge it and see what I can bring to it.

To break R&B into subcategories does a disservice to the music. I like to live in a zone where I can do whatever I want, where I don't have to worry about genre.

Being able to take musical ideas through every iteration is attractive to me. Granted, not everyone's going to want to listen to that, but it should exist.

You'll find little schools of musicians experimenting with different ways of making music in Brooklyn, all through Manhattan, in Queens, in Jersey, you know? The city is still bubbling with creativity.

I love mixing up my genres.

I'm quite an eclectic musician.

It's a very subjective, personal, instinctive approach as musicians of saying, 'We don't want to replace what's around; we just want to widen the possibilities.'

I never thought that I would be creating my own 'cross-over' genre. What I did was very real and organic. I have worked in so many different styles so it all just came together.

My favorite band of all time is The Clash. The thing I love about The Clash is they started out as guys who could barely play three chords. They dabbled in reggae, punk, rap, jazz. They came to a sound that could only be defined as The Clash. It was impossible to say what it was. I admire them for that.

I wouldn't go so far as to make 'You Don't Own Me' a tango or 'It's My Party' a hip-hop thing. Believe me, those things have been suggested to me. But I thought if I could stay true to the song, the arrangements would work. I'm really enjoying singing them.

It's sort of what jazz would be if it stopped being snobby and what rock would be if it stopped being stupid.

I think my music has always been a mixture, depending on whom I'm working with - what band, what musicians, what producer.

You make one solo album, and some people swear you're about to leave the band or there are creative differences.

I'm very, very open to experimenting with different people and trying to find different methods of writing and making music.

Your band members? Your band members don't want to be tied to a machine. They want to be playing. That's what the Beatles did. And the Beatles' stuff is timeless. That's what I would suggest. Just get back to sweating, playing hard, hammering, and having a blast.

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.

I like to experiment when it comes to music.

I'm influenced by a lot of different genres of music. So I'm constantly trying to rework production and make things interesting in the live show and on records.

I actually have a kind of fantasy about doing a covers album in general. My music taste is so eclectic, that I think it would be cool to put it through the funnel of my arrangements.

With Escape the Fate, I was pushing for synths and keyboards and stuff, and everybody was in disagreement with that. They didn't want to do that.

I wouldn't categorize myself as R&B or hip-hop. I don't really know how to categorize myself. I'm still working out where I fit with that stuff. I kind of think of myself as pop.

Musically, my palette is eclectic.