Bryan Ferry Quotes

Then when I was in grammar school I played the clarinet, and then, after clarinet I played the flute in college orchestra - besides singing in the college chorus and things like that.

I think I will always be performing; I don't think I can take that away. Because I really just enjoy it. I like getting up to sing; I like the challenge of learning new material and singing it in front of an audience.

If I started at 13, by the time I was 14 I was already good enough to play in front of people. I started off playing drums when I was 5, so playing in front of people didn't matter - not a problem.

I was probably six years old when I first sang before an audience.

I've been making music since I was 14, but for a while, I was afraid to perform.

I love what I do. I made my first record in '57. I don't think I'll ever get tired of making records and writing songs and singing and being in the music business.

Years and years ago, I sang at a blues bar with a band behind me. It was with my friend, my guitar teacher at the time. I took some sporadic lessons.

To me, a song is new every time I sing it.

I've performed in concert halls thousands and thousands of times in my life.

For those two years in college I was constantly singing and writing and playing in coffee houses and stuff.

I started playing around with local rock band swith the alto. And then, in a nutshell, somebody fell ill one night, the lead singer of one of the bands, and they knew I could sing, so they asked me if I would stand in. And I quite enjoyed it, actually, I must say, at 14. It was a real trip to have girls wave at you and smile and everything just because you opened your mouth and sang.

I re-read a lot of my college writing while we were in rehearsals, and it was so strange. It was wonderful to go back and revisit that part of my life. It did kind of make me hungry for it again.

It's pretty intense to have someone (the camera) looming there when you are singing a song but it's sort of invigorating too.

It's heartening to return to live music, heartening for people like me in a band. It's a very traditional thing to return to. It re-validates the original form that we fell in love with.

When I was young, I was interested more in (singing the songs). ... I can't say I'm enjoying it more now than I did before, because I loved it when I first sang in Wales, in a pub or a club. I loved it then, getting up and singing. Or as a kid in school, I've always loved to sing. But I think when you've been around a long time, it's even more satisfying to think that people are listening to me now, and I've been in the business for a long time.

"Born To Run," that expands every time we go out. It just seems to you - more of your life fills it in, fills in the story. And when we hit it every night, it's always a huge catharsis. It's fascinating to see the audience singing it back to me. It's quite wonderful, you know, to see people that intensely singing your song.

I don't think I'm the best singer in the world, for sure, but I loved doing it in 'Into the Woods.' I'll always find it tough, singing in front of people.

I must absorb everything while I'm still singing and step onto the stages of my many homes, and look out at the familiar surroundings, at the people who have come to hear me, to hear music.

I would never want something I'm wearing or the way I'm dancing or something to overshadow what I'm doing. I'd rather grab people's attention with my voice.

I don't care how much people understand what it is that I'm doing, except if they're players in my ensemble or other ensembles. I just want people to be moved by the music. If you're not moved by the music, then everything else falls away. You're not interested in the text, you're not interested in how it was done, and you're not interested in interviewing the composer and all the rest of it.

I miss singing very, very much, but the best thing is I have never been busier.

I love playing and I love singing, and the writing. There's kind of a symbiotic relationship between the writing and the playing.

A lot of people just love music, especially a lot of aspiring artists. They just want to jump in and start making music. They don't really take time to grow and appreciate the craft.

When I was in college, I was an English major, but I was part of this great group at Stanford called the Company. We didn't know any better, so we did it all; we did King Lear, we did Hamlet, new plays ... And we did it all in a covered wagon that we took around the Bay Area. We all put our makeup on in one cracked mirror. It was the most fun I've ever had.

I love the feeling of letting fly, of pushing as far as I could go with my voice. The only way you can really graduate how you do it is by doing it regularly to people who don't have to be super impressed. You can do it in the studio all day long but you don't get the flashback that you get onstage.