Charles Bradley Quotes

There were times in my career when I would try to write songs like Bob Dylan... Artists get hooked up in that. To be a follower, you lose.

What I've learned is that it's okay to take from heroes, such as Debussy, but it has to be filtered through my own personality so that ultimately it's me.

For a while, I felt a little self-impelled to write Lou Reed Kind of songs. I should have understood that a Lou Reed song was anything I wanted to write about.

You have to connect with a song, and when you write it, that connection is already there. It's your baby; your passion is in that song.

I just watched a James Brown video of him singing 'I Feel Good,' and then I kind of just copied off his moves. But I couldn't do them properly, so they turned into my own moves.

Singing is about telling a story. When you are onstage, you get to be your own self... When acting, you're someone else.

Yet, it ought to be obvious that good music generally occupies a higher plane that mere politics. Great writers can express moods through melody and capture experiences we share most powerfully - love, lust, longing; joy, rage, fear; triumph, yearning and confusion.

In other words, musicians know that going back to the Spoonful, what we were doing was not copying.

Sound comes out of a life experience.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.

If you're not observing the world around you, in some sense you're not really an artist because then that means you're just replicating other people's stuff, or, I don't even know what you're doing.

Words are the children of reason and, therefore, can't explain it. They really can't translate feeling because they're not part of it. That's why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling.

I felt Michael Jackson was inspired a little bit more from the elegance of a Fred Astaire. Michael loved Sammy Davis, Jr. and James Brown and Judy Garland and Fred Astaire. But he wasn't any of those people. To be inspired is one thing, but he made it all his own.

I feel that people really feel they've got a part of me when they listen to my albums and the themes just show themselves.

Art is about imagination. When you look at a picture from Salvador Dali, that's about imagination. When you look at Picasso, that's about imagination. Doing stuff from your heart.

I can see the music. I know what it looks like. I know what color it is. The words come easy, the tears come easy, and the joy comes easy. The music tells you what to do.

The Beatles never sounded intimidated by their idols. They never interpreted old rock; they simply played it as well and as joyfully as they knew how. On 'Rock 'n' Roll,' John Lennon does nothing but interpret old rock.

Endeavour to be faithful, and if there is any beauty in your thought, your style will be beautiful; if there is any real emotion to express, the expression will be moving.

Our music comes from our hearts - and it always has.

An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all.

I used to consider the listener. But now I'm in a space where, if I'm not inspired, I can't really do the music. I can't feel it.

It's intimidating any time to have a piece of art that someone else created, and that person says, 'Let's see what you created based on what I created.'

I've patterned myself after my musical heroes.

I'm attracted to music made by people who let themselves be emotional. They really care about what they do, and we believe in what they say.