Eric Carmen Quotes

People like Arvo Part would not have been taken seriously 20 years ago.

The Western musical canon came about not merely by accumulation, but by opposition and subversion, both to the ruling powers on whom composers depended for their livelihoods and to other musics.

Our music is an answer to the early Seventies when artsy people with big egos would do vocal harmonies and play long guitar solos and get called geniuses.

I used to watch those rock videos where they would chainsaw the piano. And I thought, 'That's what I want to do.' I thought classical music was corny.

Anyway, you know, when Richard Meltzer said rock and roll died in '68, what he means is Jefferson Airplane were no longer his buddies, that's what he really means. He means it in a political way: that was when the artists and the audience found themselves on different levels.

Lil Uzi and I gave Philly different sounds by stepping outside of the box and not sticking to the stigma.

Obviously, any living musician born after 1960 has been touched by rock and roll. It's the music of our time, and it's 'in the air,' as Steve Reich would say. My experience of it is just really direct because I'm actually playing in a collaborative band.

I love hearing the same songs over and over again - as long as queens challenge themselves to come up with new ways of performing them.

Music is always gonna change; it's just a matter of keeping up with the times.

I've always been enthralled with chaos and mayhem musically, and I loved speaking out and challenging stuff, and I thought, why is my music not representing this?

I just believed in 1979 that prog rock was finished. I just saw the handwriting on the wall. And I believed that if we continued in that direction, our career would be finished. So I kind of led the band to making 'Cornerstone,' which is an album from my point of view which was not trying to be necessarily softer, but more natural.

Nothing I'm doing musically is revolutionary in any way, shape, or form.

I think there are certain genres of music where people are allowed to go on, but there is something about rock and roll, I guess because it originally started out to be a teenage rebellion.

I always see Beethoven as having been influenced by Haydn. Yet he started a revolution - not just to be different, but also because he lived in a revolutionary era.

I think the best artists are the ones who constantly change - Madonna, Bowie.

Music is forever changing.

Music has to change. I don't want to stay the same forever.

More than a quarter of a century into the band's career together, it's inspiring to hear Melvins continue to deafen new generations of listeners.

Why am I a closet country music fan? Because I grew up being into rock, and I always thought that country music was, like, something my mom was into. Like, it wasn't cool. It wasn't happening. They were all singing about driving around in their trucks looking for Lulu.

Rock 'n' roll guitar came from blues guitar. It was the blues guys who first turned the amp up and started whacking on the Stratocaster and a Les Paul. It wasn't the country guys and it wasn't the white guys; it was the Blues guys. That's where the real fire is in all of this rock and roll music.

One of our biggest pet peeves is listening to bands that use harmony guitars for the sake of it. If you can't figure out how do something different than Maiden, UFO, or even Boston, then what's the point?

I wanted people to say that our music sounds like Porcupine Tree, not that it sounds like King Crimson.

The music I used to make was a lot more rock, so I come from this background of head banging a lot, and it took me a while to figure out how to do it in the context of our music.

Music is constantly developing and changing.

As the years go by, I realize how unique a style rock music is and how delicate you have to be with it sometimes; otherwise, you turn it into pop music or progressive rock or something else.