Eberhard Weber Quotes

That said, everything's important, and every musician who plays on the record is an integral part of it.

I'm an intuitive musician. I have no real technical skills. I can only play six chords on the guitar.

For me making music is part social, part interaction, part collaboration.

If I try to write a song, I will completely fail to write a song. But if I'm just holding my guitar and I just start humming, then I'll have a song in an hour.

When we were making Speaking in Tongues and Remain in Light, we were jamming. From that we were taking the best bits and then recording and improvising on top of those.

Although I have guitars all around, and I pick them up occasionally and write a tune and make a record, I don't really see myself as a musician. It may seem a funny thing to say. It's just like, I write lyrics, and I make up songs, but I'm not a great lyricist or songwriter or producer. It's when you put all these things together - that makes me.

I always communicate musically. I want my band not only to learn the form and feel of the song by ear, like I do, but also have the freedom to contribute.

I know when I sit with my band members and we're playing back a song that we've done, I know that they're experiencing it in a completely different way and hearing stuff that they're alerted to because the way the interpret the world is through their ears. Mine is through my eyes.

Writing music and lyrics, you tend to become a control freak - sitting alone in your room with a bare light bulb over your head, writing communist manifestos.

I'll come in with a string of riffs and direct the musical ideas. But you still need a band and their input to make the ideas come alive. You can't underestimate band chemistry.

I learn stuff from making music every time I go in the studio. I'm continuing to try to find new ways to play in a song or be in a song and have a positive impact on a song.

In the past, I'd sort of know before Ozzy sang something, what he was going to sing. I'd know what sort of way a melody was going to go 'cause of the way he'd approach it.

I never think about rhythm versus melody; I've always just played to what's in my head.

Ben was more improvisational, and relied less on methodology, and basically is a guitarist who switched to bass, whereas Jeff has a more traditional approach to playing bass in a band, and has a great sense of what his band sounds like, and we lock up nicely.

With 'Light,' I collaborated with a lot of different producers and musicians I respected, and we all wrote and worked on material which I then took to an old-school producer, David Kahne, and we put it all together. The lyrics came first - they were written before the music.

I don't need to hear Bill to go through a song. I need to hear Keith to go through a song. I know Bill will be playing what I'm playing anyway. I need to hear Keith because it's all there: the time, the chord changes, and all the licks you have to follow.

To be a good improviser, you have to study composition as a parallel. Because what improvisation is, on a high level, is spontaneous composition.

Usually, when we write in The B-52s, it's quite a collaborative process. We really take hours - and sometimes days - jamming, and then we listen and listen to them and go, 'Oh, let's use this part, and then this part.' It's really like a collage.

When you play with another piano player, it's just second nature to play the parts that need to be played.

Improvising is writing, too - there was no music and now there's music. So that's composition. And any time you take any sort of a performance liberty, you're making a compositional choice. I don't know a serious performer who hasn't made compositional decisions, who hasn't engaged in the art of composition.

In music, I don't think there's any need to be an all-rounder and do everything yourself. Play to your strengths, and do what you feel. Or do whatever the material itself demands. In this case, I felt like it would benefit from me singing, and I wanted it to have that sound.

I wish I could play music. I think I get as closeas possible with the editing of the films. Over the years musichas been an even more important influence than-or as important as-film.There's no doubt about it. Painting, movement, dance, sculpture-it'sall in cinema.

Sometimes I like to make music together with a singer or with singers.

A Cat Stevens record isn't just Cat Stevens' ideas. It's Cat Stevens and all the musicians who play with Cat Stevens, right?

In the past, I have not been able to hear myself. I play with feeling so I need to hear what is coming out of the amplifier to inspire me; I don't just play mechanically.