Steve Hackett Quotes

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

When I wrote 'Grand Illusion,' I was making it up as we went along. I wrote this stuff and tried to do the best job I could.

I don't find the songs; they find me. I just strum my guitar and wait for a lyric to come.

You sit and you let your fingers go to wherever they are going to go. You wait until you start to hear something, and you start to figure out what it is that you're doing. And then you add another piece next to that piece, and wait to see if some kind of pattern or something interesting starts to grow, and then you cultivate it.

When I'm writing a song, I'm just making stuff up as I go along.

The songs come along at their own pace when they are ready.

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.

I don't think we ever really think about it when we're doing it, because if you sort of go in with a plan of attack, it tends to take away the natural rhythm of songwriting.

When I'm writing [songs], some days the pen just goes. I'm not in charge and I'm almost listening outside of it. That's when I realize that we all have to start looking at life as a gift. It's like listening to a color and believing that these colors have soul mates and once you get them all together the painting is complete.

When you sit down and write a song, you kind of have the idea for the song, and you sit there at the piano and you kinda just write it. And then of course later there's some dinking around with it and changing some stuff. But there's this thing that happens when the song first comes out, that sort of magic when it first comes out of the ether, and you can't even really explain where it comes from. That happens so much with music, and people understand that with music. But I really think that a lot of movie and TV should be the same way.

All the best lyrics are written in ten minutes.

The main thing you worry about is just coming up with songs at all. I don't sit down and write stuff like certain writers do. They think about what they are going to write first and then they write it. I just get what comes in at me. It's like I'm a musician and if I can keep my mitt on, I can catch the balls that come at me.

I couldn't say there is a formula to songwriting. Each time is a unique experience.

I think the more that I can find myself getting out of the way - like you said yourself - trying to get out of thinking too much, and sometimes something truly special can happen. That's the beautiful mystery of song writing - that you really don't know where these songs come from exactly, and you don't know how you came up with them - and god bless it that you should have the gift of channeling that.

I don't really know why an idea comes to me. But all of a sudden, an idea comes and from experience I can intuit what something means when an interesting line pops up. Or I can intuit what an interesting choice might be. And I can try a couple of different choices, and see which one feels right, and then continue the song to see where it goes.

Don't think. The worst songs I've ever written happen when I think.

I can't legislate a song into being; it just will not happen for me.

We all love to sing, and when we sit down to write a song I think it kind of shows itself to us.

For me, something will come in my head and I'll either end up calling my cell phone to record it, or I'll just pick my guitar up and see what comes out. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it doesn't. So there's really no set method behind it.

Sometimes I feel like a melody doesn't have anything to do with me, but it's just something that comes, is accumulated from me playing on the piano, and then this little creature just appears.

I sit down and create atmospheres, start playing guitar or piano and just sing whatever comes out of my mouth.

It was spontaneously composed as I was playing it. And then I added a couple of other overdub textures on top of it after the fact. But it's one of those things where I wouldn't be able to sit down and specifically write that. That's just what came out.

I have great difficulty sitting in the middle of the night and writing. Everything I do comes spontaneous. Sometimes it takes a long time; sometimes it comes just like that.

Rap is something you can just throw on the skillet and fry up real quick. That's how it comes to me, my train of thought. It's like getting dressed - I don't have to sit down and stare at clothes, I just pick what I like and put it on. But rock, you gotta put it in the oven and let it bake.

The great songs just come out. If it comes quick, just leave it that way.