Bill Clegg Quotes

I think there's always been singers like that and i've done my fair share of cheese as well.

You know, Neil Young is singing Rock n' roll will never die, and Neil never rocked and rolled in his life. I mean, he rocked, but he didn't roll. He has got no swing in him.

I've written quite a variety of songs, everything from kids songs to political satire, and my dad covered a fairly large range, also.

My upbringing made me think that real legitimate music is written, not heard.

Irving Berlin was the greatest songwriter of all time. I was in awe of him. But his music wasn't my music. My music was the blues.

I've only written 30 songs or something. Dylan's written over 500 songs. There's no comparison. He's the Shakespeare of rock 'n' roll and popular music.

Music is in my DNA!

I listen to a variety of music. The only common point is strong lyrics; I'm more obsessed with lyrics than music. I need to hear a form of truth, and if it's a hard truth, even better.

I don't have to save rock. I don't even like rock that much.

I am not a pop musician; I don't want to play bubble-gummy pop stuff.

When they look back on me I want 'em to remember me not for all my wives, although I've had a few, and certainly not for any mansions or high livin' money I made and spent. I want 'em to remember me simply for my music.

See my father knew a lot about music, he played the piano and he would do theory and stuff like that, but I didn't learn anything from him, but I played that for him and he liked it a lot.

I equally love both, classic rock and hip-hop. I love all music, really, and I really use classic rock a lot. I'm heavily influenced by that melodically in my music. I can't really separate the two.

I'm never gonna be a Carlos Santana - an instrumentalist. I just like songs. It's three minutes of something that can be very powerful.

They have all different names for music. I think the music I'm going to change the style with is going to be really, really big-years and years after I'm gone.

I think for writers who write that kind of stuff, they want to make changes. Look at Kris Kristofferson and Dylan. I mean, whole generations come along liking that stuff and that's great.

The biggest influence? I've had several at different times - but the biggest for me was Bob Dylan, who was a guy that came along when I was twelve or thirteen and just changed all the rules about what it meant to write songs.

It's true, there's a lot of melancholy in my music. I don't know why, I'm not a melancholy person. I've always been drawn to it. Ever since I was a kid, if I had an album I would play the ballads on repeat.

I've had mentors who were kind of the troubadour singer-songwriters, like Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Neil Young, and that's just what I've always liked - people who would talk real honestly about their lives and their circumstance.

There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.

The thing that will never go away is that connection you make with a band or a song where you're moved by the fact that it's real people making music. You make that human connection with a song like 'Let It Be' or 'Long and Winding Road' or a song like 'Bohemian Rhapsody' or 'Roxanne,' any of those songs. They sound like people making music.

I don't care if it's a Cole Porter song, or George Gershwin, or Lennon/McCartney, or Elton John, or you know, whoever, Bob Dylan. Great songs are great songs, and they stand the test of time, and they can be interpreted and recorded with many points of view, but yet still retain the essence of what makes them good songs.

I'm a huge Springsteen fan, and yet if either he or Bob Dylan had to be erased from the world's hard drive, I would save Bob Dylan's work for sure - he's the greater talent, and by leaps and bounds and skyscrapers and rocket blasts. But Bob Dylan is an alien to his public.

I'm not a culture snob. So while, of course, I think the Mozart 'Requiem' or, say, Beethoven's 'Ninth' are some of the greatest works of art in the history of humankind, that's not to say the Beatles or Queen or Simon and Garfunkel aren't brilliant, beautiful, important works of art that should be sung without a sense of irony.

I pay attention to lyrics and I know what rap fans care about. I try to write for the average listener and I'm conscious of the mainstream without selling out.