Bill Nighy Quotes

When I was a kid, I was following black soul music.

I think that American music, for me, it's a synthesis of a lot of different things. But for me growing up in North Carolina, the stuff that I was listening to, the things that I was hearing, it was all about black music, about soul music.

I like American black soul music, that was my first big enthusiasm.

The Righteous Brothers were purely rhythm and blues, black music.

I prefer black music in general.

Ninety-nine percent of the music that was of any interest to me when I was growing up came out of the black community.

Since the age of 12, all my musical thinking has been influenced by Afro-American music.

As would-be songwriters, our interest was in black music and black music only. We wanted to write songs for black voices.

I always liked jazz. And my people liked the old blues, race records and the doo-wop and all that.

Blues is a big part of rock and roll. The best rock and roll got its birth in the blues. You hear it in Little Richard and Chuck Berry.

The Blues? It's the mother of American music. That's what is is - the source.

The best musicians in the world were raised on the same kind of music I was raised on and that is black, soulful, authoritative, ultra-tight, ferocious, uppity, defiant music that from the Howlin' Wolf, the Muddy Waters, the Lightnin' Hopkins, the Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Little Richard.

I'm making black music. That's the only outline for me, really. That's the only boundary to stay with. It's soul music. I'm going all out in those terms.

I think America concedes that true American music has sprung from the Negro.

I grew up with a heavy diet of gospel, folk, and blues because those are kind of the cornerstones of traditional American music.

I grew up loving Etta James and Aretha Franklin and Al Green and Otis Redding, and I just love old-school R&B. It's just music that moves you and grooves you, and it was very important, I think, for music.

Miles Davis was doing something inherently African, something that has to do with all forms of American music, not just jazz.

As far as I'm concerned, blues and jazz are the great American contributions to music.

I believe that blues and jazz are the two uniquely American contributions into music.

Soul music is pain - you can hear the slaves, the beatin' and the hurtin'.

The music I was really listening to in 1968 was James Brown, the great guitar player Jimi Hendrix, and a new group... Sly and the Family Stone, led by Sly Stewart from San Francisco.

You have to have a little soul in your singing. The kind of soul that's in the spirituals. That's why I'd like to include spiritual material in the sets I do. It's a part of my life.

I love funk and soul and Motown.

I want to remind people that black music is amazing. And there are all forms of it that we've forgotten, you know? Rock music is black music! Don't forget that's what it is.

I got into the soul music, but I wanted to rock. I was a rocker.