John Lydon Quotes

I have a curiosity that compels me to find ways to make music that are fresh and new.

Any good music must be an innovation.

I don't try to make the guitar sound like the harpsichord or lute. That makes you end up being like a bad copy.

So I learnt a few country western songs, I bought a chord book, and right away I started writing my own stuff, which nobody else did that, I don't know why.

A lot of songs are derivative of each other. Sometimes you need to take a departure from what you do to something that's slightly different in order to get inspiration.

I study what's happening in music. I want to sound different than everybody else.

Composers are very individual creatures.

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?

To be able to take music and do something as profoundly original as what we did with the Allman Brothers, you've got to put some time into it.

The one thing you don't want is that stale sound when you've done a line so much you can't find a fresh approach to it. Drop it.

I'm dead serious about my craft and just really serious about making music in itself. I take pride in making songs and albums where no two songs sound alike. That's the challenge and that's what it's all about, to keep it original and fresh and funky.

You just keep playing. If someone special comes along and organizes it in a new way, then you'll have another approach and everybody will jump on it to try to learn.

I mean, there are only so many notes. What makes something original is how you put it together.

I am not really certain how original my contribution to music is as I am obviously an amateur.

I think no matter what kind of music you play, there will be moments when you feel like it's all been done before.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

I think its so cool that you can pick up the guitar and create something that didn't exist 5 minutes ago. You can write something that no ones ever heard before. You have music at your fingertips.

Just the type of music that was around at the same time as I was writing. Some of it was wicked, definitely. But there was just one direction which I thought could be pushed that no one was pushing.

I wrote music. I was in a hardcore band when I was 14, and I wasn't good enough to play anyone else's songs, so I had to write my own.

You have got to make new music, that is the way that I look at it anyway.

When you tune your guitar in a different way, it lends itself to a new way of looking at your songwriting.

What is nice about country music today is that most artists are not trying to do something everybody else is doing. They really are trying to develop their own uniqueness.

I don't feel that all the great songs have been written. I do feel that where we are now, certainly with rock & roll music, is that so much of it is variations on themes. But I think that it's one's particular creativity and individuality that comes out within that variation on a particular theme that makes a song great.

I always look for the weirdest note to land on. I felt that that was the least I could do for the great musical traditions which I've spawned.

The only way I'm not going to follow other people in reggaeton is if I listen to other things. I get other melodies or sounds and put them in reggaeton and make it different.