Javed Ali Quotes

I always wish I'd had more mentors, better mentors, wiser mentors, people who were proper professional working musicians to guide me as I was coming up.

K.G. Sathar, a neighbour, was my guru. He taught me the violin and Hindustani music.

What I used to play was rhythm guitar before I saw Jack Bruce. I said, That's what I want to do in life. He was definitely the main influence.

When I was a kid, I went through a lot of musical phases, and one was when I'd learn everything that The Beatles ever recorded. After I started drums, I fell in love with their music so much that I just wanted to learn everything.

Mancini was a big part of my life. I sang a lot of his music, and he became a good buddy.

Hearing a lot of early rock n' roll records from a very young age was a huge influence.

Laurence Fishburne is my mentor.

I've learnt music, since this is a part and parcel of growing up in a traditional Tamil Brahmin family. In fact, I've even given three exams in music when I was young.

I would like to teach Metallica our dance moves, just because we've learned so much from them about metal.

My mother is an amazing vocalist and a lot of my grounding in music has come from her. She was a student of Lakshmi Shankar, my father's sister- in- law.

I had a teacher at school who told me to take up the harp.

We get so many kids telling us that they've taken up the violin or cello. It's really special, and it wasn't really our intention in the beginning.

Chick Corea was a great influence on me, musically, as I was growing up.

I've been playing my instrument since I was about three or four. That's when I started banging around on the piano, trying to be like The Beatles.

I almost chose the career of an ethnomusicologist because I was so fascinated by that music. It gives a different feeling of time.

I'm going to try and make you take the Beatles and Eric Clapton as seriously as the Berlin Philharmonic and Simon Rattle.

I have mentors like Erykah Badu. She's been like a big sister to me.

My mother is a retired music teacher. She taught me in high school, and she would take us and put us in these madrigal groups. We would go to a museum or whatever and just perform.

I see little girls at my meet-and-greets who are like, 'Kelsea! It's my first concert and I came to see you.' And I'm thinking, 'I don't want to post anything online that your mom would be mad at me for, because you're important to me.'

I'm very lucky; I have a lot of knowledge. My favorite band is The Beatles, so a lot of inspiration for my music comes from them, too.

I was living in New York. Sometimes, our gang of musicians would go to Louis Armstrong's home and play records. It was a lesson, like going to school at night. Ella Fitzgerald was an inspiration, too, a unique artist. When you had an opportunity to be with people like them, you cherished it.

I learned things by being in Lester Flatts' band, and I learned things by playing with Johnny Cash, and I learned from Pop Staples. I'm a sponge.

My mum was a music teacher. I've got three sisters, and we all played instruments when we were kids.

You just have to have a song that you're desperate to play along to, and for me it was 'Turn' by the Scottish band Travis. I went to see them headline the Scottish T in the Park Festival, so after that festival, I went home and taught myself all of the Travis back catalog with an old guitar and a little chord book.

Around seventh grade, I got a guitar and forgot everything else.