Jon Landau Quotes

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

My dad's music was a great inspiration to me.

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

I shall always respect the composer. If I embellish, it is his idea I am embellishing.

I wear my musical heart on my sleeve and show all my influences off. I'm happy for someone to point out that my song sounds like someone else's.

To have everything written for you... It's not really creating. That's why I think symphony drummers are so limited. They 're limited to exactly what was played a hundred years before them by a thousand other drummers.

I try to steal something from the great singers. Of course, I don't want to imitate their sound, but I try to do a sort of compromise.

There's a lot of music at my fingertips that I can be influenced by. And just because I play a horn, I don't need to sound, or try to capture, what was happening before me. I can just respect it and learn from it.

Composers shouldn't think too much - it interferes with their plagiarism.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

I love the pioneers like Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, but when I write music, it comes out in my own way.

We don't need another Woody. Even Bob Dylan knew he couldn't be Woody Guthrie... I like Woody Guthrie fine, but I don't need the 50th generation version of it.

I've been ripping the Rolling Stones off with every song I write in some form or another.

If there was a direct influence on a song, I never hid it.

You don't show respect to Frank Sinatra and his great example by trying to sound exactly like him. You show it by sounding exactly like you, and that's the way jazz has always progressed as an art form.

I don't get so much inspiration from other musicians. Especially alive musicians. Late musicians are good - Bach, Beethoven - yes, good.

I know I idolise someone like Billie Holiday, but I don't look at her and think I have to imitate her lifestyle, to try and sing like she did.

The song is just the given. It's how you cover it that matters.

People get to a certain age and success that they stop being curious. I'm still curious because I haven't really had that success. I've never done a record to catch whatever the latest sound is. It's my love of music, eclectic-ness, and the music that I heard my entire life that seeps in. That's what you're hearing.

If one uses music that one does not really love, then one will not succeed in making it one's own.

Great musicians accept everything that they hear and find something good. They take what they like and they throw away what they don't like.

We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about but try to be yourself while you're doing so.

The most important thing is that you honor that musical integrity, whether you make music that sounds like ABBA or you make music that sounds like Void.

I realized that I could try to sound like Waylon Jennings, or I could try to be like Waylon Jennings... but it's impossible to do both.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.