Bernard Sumner Quotes

No matter what I do, my songs come out in a certain style, and if that sounds like Dead Kennedys, then there's probably a reason for it. Don't forget, I wrote most of those songs, music and lyrics.

I didn't start to collect records and listen to guitar players properly until I went to art school, when I'd already been playing for five years. So my style was already formed, and that's why I think it's so unique.

What formed me as a musician, a songwriter, the sound and personality of my band, a whole lot of that happened well before 1991.

My first year making music was very experimental. I was trying to find my sound. My second year, I was more in my element. I knew what type of production I wanted to go over and the topics I wanted to address.

When I first started singing in Paris, I sounded horrible: I was just singing to get some money to eat. And I wasn't singing my own songs: it was Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix. Eventually, when I wrote my own music, my style just came out of my own place.

After touring with David Bowie last year, I was inspired to look at what I wanted to do as an artist, and I realized I wanted to go back to the music I fell in love with when I was eight years old.

At first, I was just trying to sound like DOOM and Eminem, and then I dug out my own voice, I guess.

Pete Townshend is one of my greatest influences. More than any other guitarist, he taught me how to play rhythm guitar and demonstrated its importance, particularly in a three-piece band.

When you're making a record, you try to achieve stylistically what fits on you. Like a good old coat, you know what I mean?

Make your own music. It can be done.

I was a huge Beatles fan. We could talk about who I listened to growing up and what my sources were, but certainly the Beatles were a late, important resource for me, and I just took my guitar and a handful of songs, and I decided, well, I'll just go over and travel around Europe and see what comes of it.

I'll never quit playing country music, or at least acknowledging it, always, as the cornerstone of what I am.

Well, I started writing songs about three years ago when I learned to play the guitar, but I've been singing since I was eleven.

I don't like to waste notes, not even one. I like to put the right note in the right place, and my influences have always been those kinds of players. Keith Richards comes to mind, and I really like Nils Lofgren's soloing, because he's so melodic. I love John Lennon's rhythm playing, and George Harrison was an incredible guitarist.

I borrowed a guitar at age 16 and taught myself to play because I wanted to write songs.

I'm a mash-up of everyone. My influences would be Michael Jackson, Brandy, Aaliyah - those types of people. So if you can imagine them - and with me taking them, and then putting my own twist and the influence on it - that's musically what I would sound like.

Probably my two biggest musical influences were the Everly Brothers and the Beatles, in chronological order. Both of them have had a very simple-sounding musical style that's actually quite complex as far as popular songs are concerned.

I don't like the idea of a singer-songwriter record. I don't picture myself that way, and it's not my favorite sort of look, I guess. It's really just an aesthetic thing.

I think Westlife is very unique: we have a certain sound; we do our thing our way, and we don't try to change too much. I think that's what the fans love about us. We keep giving the fans what they want every year. The style of music never really changes too much.

I spent many years trying to write a lot like Ben Folds or John Lennon or Rivers Cuomo. I think that's healthy when you're learning to write and seeing how chords fit together and how songs take shape.

I love the pioneers like Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, but when I write music, it comes out in my own way.

I believe every guitar player inherently has something unique about their playing. They just have to identify what makes them different and develop it.

I pestered the hell out of everybody I ran into until I could play the guitar well enough to write and sing with it.

In the beginning, I wrote OK songs, but they didn't have a unique perspective.

As I've grown as an artist, I've gotten more and more in touch with my center, and that center is voice and guitar.