St. Lucia Quotes

It was a free-for-all with music when I was growing up. My mother was a huge music fanatic so I was listening to everything from country to heavy metal to Indigo Girls to Elton John. I guess when I was really young I didn't like Willie Nelson, and she obviously loved him. Now I do too, I'm so thankful to her for playing his music nonstop.

My family is still in Los Angeles. We listened to all sorts of music: Mexican music, oldies, soul, disco and rock & roll. I was surrounded by music.

I'd been to South Africa during the Seventies, when it was definitely not kosher to go there. I felt that the best thing to do was to be a missionary and tell people what was going on in their own country because censorship was so dreadful.

My mom did a good job exposing me to different types of music.

I grew up in a racially mixed neighborhood. So going over to friends' houses for dinner, their parents listened to Al Green and Luther Ingram. It was something that hit me early on, the feeling that came across.

My days of being the tardy employee at the record store gave me a cultural and musical understanding that was more unique than if I'd just listened to garbage-y pop on the radio my entire life.

Pop comes from the word 'popular,' which means that it could be anything that appeals to any group of people. When you talk about general masses, I think there's elements in every kind of music that can reach a broad audience.

The first album I bought with my own money was 'A Hard Day's Night.'

The one thing the blues don't get is the backing and pushing of TV and radio like a lot of this garbage you hears. They choke stuff down people's throat so they got no choice but to listen to it.

When I was very little, we would get letters from China, in Chinese, and they' be censored. We were a very insular little family.

I'm moved by a lot of different kinds of music, whether it's pop music or R&B or straight-ahead jazz or free or opera or music from all parts of the world.

My parents were part of a crowd that was attached to all the different navies stationed in Malta. When they would have parties in each other's houses, I would get taken along, and that's where I heard all this great music. I didn't distinguish particular styles; it was all music to me.

I was brought up with beautiful music - Nat King Cole and Glen Miller from my dad, and my mum loved Judy Garland and Doris Day - brilliant stuff. Through my brothers and sisters I heard David Bowie and The Specials, The Carpenters, Meatloaf and The Rolling Stones.

If there is enough space on radio for Busted and McFly, who are basically the same band, or for 50,000 versions of Stereophonics and Coldplay, there must be enough room for all of us.

Before I was 5, I did have a lot of time on my hands. I had no job and really no career, and I spent an awful lot of time listening to records. It was more the classical ones, really - Prokofiev, and I think there was some Mozart in there, and more impressionistic composers like Delius.

What's wrong with hip-hop is the system that controls the definition of it. There needs to be more balance on the airwaves.

I've made enough jokes about Iran's leadership that I'm sure if I showed up that I would get a nice escort - to the main prison - and then I could do a show there.

I grew up with music definitely.

Whenever we can, we try to talk to students. If I can, I'll invite kids from a school to a sound check and take questions from them. I want to show them it's cool to play the trombone. Kids are influenced by what's accessible to them. It's hard for kids to be introduced to music other than what they see on TV and video.

All my musical influences came from my mom, who did everything to music. She played it 24 hours a day, seven days a week in our house. So that's where my love for music came from.

I was exposed to many kinds of music including rock and disco, classical and folk, Midtown and Miles Davis, Sly Stone and David Bowie.

Growing up as a classical musician, you're taught a lot about outreach and about how people aren't being taught music in school. But you don't have to study music to like it. And a lot of the music that people like - be it jazz or rock or opera - is stuff they haven't studied.

Anyone of any age or background who loved pop music liked our songs.

I was raised on 'TRL' and listened to every genre that sounded good to me, from Sum 41 to Jay Z to Band of Horses to J. Dilla to Deathcab for Cutie to Pharrell.

Growing up, I was surrounded by music by the Stones, Carole King, and the Beach Boys. I didn't know who Michael Jackson was till I was about 13.