Phil Lynott Quotes

Songwriting is the other weight on the opposite side of the scale from touring. They balance me out creatively.

I'm in the studio for hours in that tiny little box, and really, the performing part is what I'm most excited about.

I really look forward to putting on a record. I love writing music and think that may be my strong suit even more than singing. I can't wait to take that music on tour and share it with as many people as I can.

A sold-out crowd is better than a number one. But being in the studio is better than all of that.

I kept writing all these ballads; they're me speaking about life. But how am I gonna do the live show I wanna do if I don't have something I can dance to?

I enjoy touring. I enjoy recording the music, I enjoy dreaming it and I enjoy performing it. I also definitely enjoy selling it, because I like to eat.

For some artists the live performance is the chicken before the egg of writing or recording of repertoire. For other artists the writing or recording of repertoire is the chicken before the egg of live performance.

A lot of times I go back to record and to make a tour, but I'm very happy to do it, because it gives me an opportunity to dig and hear what's going on.

When you're playing in front of people, everything is external. It's all going from you out to an audience. When you're in a studio, it's very internalised, it's going from the air through you into this meticulously crafted, layered piece of work.

To make a rock'n'roll record, technology is the least important thing.

When we make records, it's hard to pinpoint one thing that inspires a record. It's usually a number of different things that lead to inspiration or wanting to write something down and share it with someone.

Songwriters aren't always performers, and even performing songwriters aren't always the kind of show-biz performers you think they'd be.

I'm always writing. And, I mean, I always counsel people when they call me a musician: I really do not have the skills of a musician. I really don't think like a musician, though I love music and I perform and sing.

I just to put out the best records I can and perform the best I can.

I really want to write a novel. I also want to learn to play the mandolin.

It's always a live experience - anything that happens around you. It's so easy to just put it to a song.

You have to create the show anew, and find it anew, on a nightly basis.

My lyrical content is all about entertainment.

I think the reason I got into the music business was basically for the live aspect of it.

The writing is everything of course but you can't be making records and not be willing to go out there and perform.

For the most part, the real work is done in the songwriting stage and recording; the next step is presenting to people.

I always knew that if I was ever going to perform something that I wrote in front of an audience, I was going to do the thing I most like to experience as an audience member, which is to be tricked.

I feel, in my live shows, I can be as dynamic as I want. It's my comfort zone. When I get in the studio, it's more of a solitary experience, which can be good creatively.

We have this song called 'Radio,' and I wrote that song when we needed one more song for a record. So I went back into the other room and wrote it in 20 minutes.

There were aspects of stardom I didn't like, which were of no consequence, really, but the positive things far outweighed the negative. By the time I came to write 'Setting Sons,' I felt my writing was more like prose, set to music.