Henry Mancini Quotes

Music can be witty, but it's not funny unless it's conceptually funny.

There's a long tradition - certainly with country, but in all kinds of genres of music - to have humorous lyrics. Certainly with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and, if you look at country, Roger Miller and Jim Stafford.

Cheech and I used to call ourselves musicians; we never called ourselves comedians. We were musicians that were funny.

I want to be taken seriously as the type of musician that plays stuff like an electric rake. I mean, how seriously do you take someone like Spike Jones? They take him pretty seriously - a really good musician who made a great contribution in terms of humor, which is part of what I try to do too.

There are a lot of songs that would ostensibly be a good candidate for parody, yet I can't think of a clever enough idea.

Funny songs aren't usually that good. Like Weird Al and maybe a couple of Beatles songs, but it's kind of hard to bring humor into rock music in an interesting way.

Whenever I do a parody it's not meant to make you hate anybody's music really.

There's a few tunes of mine that don't have jokes, but most of them have a joke and they have a humorous point of view somewhere.

I would say, generally speaking, though it is not always the case, comedy is probably the least gratifying for most composers because it is more specific about what the music needs to do.

When Jack Black and I started Tenacious D, there were about two seconds in the beginning when we thought maybe we'd have a go at serious music. But we quickly abandoned that when we realized that everything we did tended to come out funny.

It is easy to misunderstand what a comedy song is, or what its potential is. I'm used to musical comedy being maligned as an easy artform.

I'm not sure a lot of us in the music business or in rock 'n' roll are given credit for irony or humor.

In some ways, comedy and something like a musical do go hand-in-hand.

There's been so many different types of musicals, and it's a funny genre because there's a fine line between clever and stupid. It really takes a genius to know how to do it.

People never ask people doing serious music, 'Do you ever think about doing funny music?'

I remember seeing McCoy Tyner in concert, and thinking that the music was incredible, but wanting to be invited in. I figured that humor was the way of letting the audience in. I've gotten a hard time about it, but I love to be funny onstage.

My parents have always had a great sense of humor. And I really appreciate good humor in songs, witty lyrics that sneak up on you and then you listen again, and say: 'That's so funny.' John Prine's songs have always had this really witty tone.

One of my favorites is 'The Sound of Music'. When Julie Andrews runs through the hills singing her head off, I always wish that a gust of wind would blow her skirt up.

To me, the musical is best when it's a musical comedy. So if you have a very, very funny show, and very good, funny songs, that's what the musical does best.

There's no type of music I don't like. I think it's important to be able to make fun of all types.

One of my pet peeves is that sometimes the talents of my band get overlooked because, and it was the same problem that Frank Zappa had, with a lot of groups that use humor, people don't realize there's a lot of craft behind the comedy.

What I took back, because of my exposure to the Jewish music of the 30s and the 40s in my upbringing with my father, was that kind of theatrical songwriting. It was always a part of my character. This desire to make people laugh.

I spent many years laughing at Harry Secombe's singing until somebody told me that it wasn't a joke.

There's sketch, improv, writing, acting, music, and badminton. Those are the seven forms of comedy. But I do like the idea of being an auteur in the sense of writing and being in your own stuff.

I was doing jokey rap stuff in high school. But it was never serious. It was always, like, 'It'd be cool to do this as a form of comedy.'