James Horner Quotes

Everything I listen to is influential in some way.

A lot of people go, "I'm influenced by the Beatles and Zeppelin," and they just sound like a karaoke.

Well, it'll always be disco/electro-pop. That's what I first wanted to do when I started out as a musician in 1977. It's only ever been dance-pop that I've wanted to do.

At some point I decided I didn't want to learn any more guitar technique. I was at that level where the next mountain there was to climb was Van Halen and I didn't really like Van Halen.

It's a kind of honour when I see how many people are imitating the style of how I make films.

I would consider my music like, pop-R&B. So it can reach a lot of people. Pop is popular music. That's what it stands for. So I'm just making music that I know that I like, I know other people will like, and my fans will like.

Kenny Burrell that's the sound I'm looking for.

Every person I've met has influenced my songs.

We've all been influenced by other people...If Minnie Riperton never existed, would I have even thought of singing in that (upper) register? I doubt it.

I never get too many problems. You can never please everyone anyway, obviously. And some people take the easy route and just play the greatest hits, and their audience is happy to hear that as well, and that's fine, but it wouldn't please me. But it doesn't trouble me.

I don't know why people call me a jazz singer, though I guess people associate me with jazz because I was raised in it, from way back. I'm not putting jazz down, but I'm not a jazz singer...I've recorded all kinds of music, but (to them) I'm either a jazz singer or a blues singer. I can't sing a blues – just a right-out blues – but I can put the blues in whatever I sing. I might sing 'Send In the Clowns' and I might stick a little bluesy part in it, or any song. What I want to do, music-wise, is all kinds of music that I like, and I like all kinds of music.

Not many people bought Velvet Underground LPs, but those who did, started a band.

I love listening to other musicians and seeing what they do to gain their distinctive respective sounds and edge.

I just can't stand it [jazz/rock]. It just doesn't sound right to me. It doesn't hit me...it doesn't get me...it just doesn't grab me.

We should read other people's books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer's thought that help us to do so.

The things I see every day inspire my sound and lyrics, like certain people and situations that stick out in my mind. There are also certain musicians I love whose music and styles inspire me.

When I was young, I used to need other people's albums and I got very involved with their music and it meant a lot to me.

If you should see people in a room, you would not think that you had made those people, or that you were responsible for them.

When people ask me my influences and I'm like, "nobody" they're like, "there has to be somebody." People seem to think you have to have an influence.

It is inescapable that Ringo was the catalyst for the others. He certainly completed the jigsaw and The Beatles, with Ringo, became a magnet for the great camera artists of the world, a target for the jaded, lately hostile eyes of people who had hardly known that popular music existed.

People gather details and comparisons but it doesn't really bother me or land on me of any sort. I don't know if I was... Maybe I was influenced by them, maybe I wasn't, but I don't know. I was probably influenced by everything I've heard. So it doesn't bother me at all, but it doesn't sway me either.

Don't the people you're around shape the music, is that what you're saying? Everything does.

I suppose I was affected by raw sounds and timbres more than a lot of other composers. Had I been involved with orchestral composing, I think the aspect that would have most endeared me to that field would have been the orchestration.

I'll leave it to other people to evaluate the legacy of my book, but I'm very moved when musicians tell me that they've been inspired by my book.

Over the years, I was doing what I loved to do, which is my music. But it was always a bit distorted, because I was doing the music in the way other people around me were telling me it should be done.