Ray Davies Quotes

"Diamonds & Rust" started off as another song. Then the words started to morph. When you write a song that deep, the words come from some place else. But when the songs stop coming, it would be so contrived to try and force it. Since then I've just been doing other people's music.

Certain songs have been written years apart, but they have a natural continuity to my mind.

With some songs, I have written narratives or I've tried to carry it through, but generally the things that were more genius, as far as I was concerned, were not that.

I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs.

Black Sabbath was written on bass: I just walked into the studio and went, bah, bah, bah, and everybody joined in and we just did it.

Writing 'We Are Never Getting Back Together' was one of the most hilarious experiences I have ever had in the studio because it just happened so naturally.

I could probably have an idea one day and then go into the studio and really wanna write about just that idea that I have in mind. Or it can vary with just a simple beat and I just do a bunch of melodies on the track that inspire me.

Every song I've written, it's about what I've gone through, good or bad. It kind of comes out of me, and I'm grateful for that. I've got friends who are back home who've got no way to express that, and they're kind of in a different position in life. It's alarming to me that I've written something on my bedroom floor when I was 19 or something, and then there's 50,000 people that know the words, and they've got a similar feeling. If you thought about it too much, your head would blow up.

The music usually occurs to me as a complete sound, and then I have developed the skill of being able to translate that into a fully realized song.

I think all of my songs are either based on personal experience or will be based on personal experience, because I do write a lot of songs prophetically.

Sometimes a song can take up to a year to write, and because I waited that year and waited to work on it that day, it came up that extra 50 percent.

I'm not sure if the next song I write is going to be about love or a song about a tree.

I have no shame in making music that maybe, if you listen to it long enough, you'll realize you've heard this or that part of it before. I'm still very excited by an amazingly written song, so that's really the thing that I work on when I make records with people.

I have a few songs that I'm figuring out and writing. I'm still figuring out the whole concept and how it's gonna connect to Cry Baby, but I have some ideas, yes.

There's only one proper way a song should go, but you've got to be patient enough to let them come together time wise. Sometimes it's lightning in a bottle and you got the song. But oftentimes it shows up.

The first splurge of creativity is kind of free, and the last 30 percent is painstakingly hard work, but it's good to light a fire and make it public and create that expectation. It's become part of the writing process, really, a way to ask the audience what they think, how they think it's going. I can't write songs in a vacuum.

People around me are always an inspiration due to their love of the music and they help me to generate ideas for music. But it's really the passion and drive I have for my music that keeps me connected. I recorded my first song in the studio at 8 years old and I've taken it seriously since then. Making music is fun to me so I aim to translate those feelings into the music.

Songs are puzzles - you get an intro, or maybe an end, but you gotta fill in the rest. Sometimes they come easy and sometimes they're a pain in the ass.

How does a person create a song? A lot of it is being open to encounter and to be in touch with the miraculous.

All of a sudden there's a song - there in your hotel room playing your guitar - and you write it, and two or three years later it will come true. It keeps you on your toes.

I try to think of the songs as little movies. They're always pretty visual to me. I can always sort of see them. I don't always know what the end result is going to be, and I don't know exactly what it's going to sound like, but I can kinda see them.

Our whole intention was to make a record of songs that we grew up with and change them up a little bit, but we kind of stumbled on writing "Joseph's Lullaby." The irony is when I originally wrote the song, it was called "Mary's Lullaby." I wrote it from Mary's standpoint and it was in a higher key, a real falsetto, and it just wasn't right. One day, the producer's wife said, "Well, it's kind of odd that you're singing from Mary's perspective, being the guy. Why don't you do Joseph?

I just tried to come up with some honest songs. What I was writing about was real plain stuff that I wasn't sure was going to be interesting to other people. But I guess it was...I've never had any discipline whatsoever. I just wait on a song like I was waiting for lightning to strike. And eventually-usually sometime around 3 in the morning-I'll have a good idea. By the time the sun comes up, hopefully, I'll have a decent song.

I called the guys from Promise of the Real, whom I've been playing with, and they were all on the road. Right after I hung up the phone, I wrote another song and started writing another, and I'm going, "Hey, I can't wait. I should be doing this now!" My experience tells me that when it's there, it's there, and you can't make it wait. So I got Jimmy Keltner and Paul Bushnell, two good guys, and went in and did this record ["Peace Trail"].

I used to carry a notebook to the studio. I don't do that no more 'cause I don't have the time to write anywhere but right there in the studio on the spot. So when you hear my stuff, know that I wrote it in the studio.