Levon Helm Quotes

What comprises good performance? The ability through singing or playing to make the ear conscious of the true content and affect of a composition.

I have often heard the statement made by foreign singers, as a demonstrated fact, that the German artists are artists in feeling indeed, and serious in their devotion, but that their singing is crude.

The art of interpretation is not to play what is written.

Piano playing consists of common sense, heart and technical resources. All three should be equally developed. Without common sense you are a fiasco, without technique an amateur, without heart a machine. The profession does have its hazards.

And I like to interpret music. So I think it's all interpretive.

Singers, like Frank Sinatra and myself, we interpret the songs that we like. Not unlike a Shakespearean actor that goes back to the greatest words ever written, we go back to the greatest songs and bring about my interpretation of them.

The quality of the writing, really. Simple as that. Beautiful words. It's very nice as a singer to do great songs, which have wonderful lyrics and strong feelings underneath the song.

Music was something I found on my own. I got my first guitar when I was around 10, and it just all developed over time.

Singing isn't always about being on key; it's about emotionality.

Because if you've got the wit, you can make anything into a melody, ultimately.

I can't sing, like, I can't saaang. I'm no Luther! That to me is singing. Being able to hit a note doesn't mean you can sing.

I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.

Good taste - that's all you really need when you're playing an instrument.

I don't have favourites, I think, when you play, you have to be like a prostitute, you have to love the piece you are playing. Even if you don't like it, you have to play it as if you would like it. Then you are a good interpreter.

The songs in 'Wonderland' don't have a melodic life for me - I'm not a musical person - but they have an emotional life, an emotional echo perhaps.

It's not enough to hit the notes. There is no point in the singers just standing there and sounding wonderful if they're not connecting with the characters they are portraying.

All I have is my performance, I try to feed in the best of everything that I could possibly do into those 90 minutes and to make a live entertainment show out of it.

Songs suffer at the mercy of the performer.

For me it's the instrument. If I want to think of a flute and the state of the arts I hear a vibrato; I don't know what a flute is unless the person plays it for me.

Music is emotional, and you may catch a musician in a very unemotional mood or you may not be in the same frame of mind as the musician. So a critic will often say a musician is slipping.

I'll make music as long as I can sing and stand up and hold a guitar and I feel like doing this.

As a singer, you have to bring the soul to the song.

I don't know what aids creativity. All I know is that it feels natural to hold a guitar in my hands and sing.

Just because you have developed the craft on your instrument doesn't mean that you don't have the ability to be expressive emotionally on that instrument, or vice versa.

One does not play the piano with one's fingers: one plays the piano with one's mind.