Jonny Greenwood Quotes

I mean, in rock music terms I'm like a dinosaur.

It's gotta be rock and roll music, if you wanna dance with me.

To me the most important thing is getting into a studio and making an album that is 12 or 14 amazing songs, getting up onstage, and making people happy by livening the rock.

Rock has to absorb other rhythmic forms, because the underlying rhythm of music changes with fashion, and people like to move differently, and the underlying rhythms have to be the ones that people want to dance to.

The soul of rock 'n' roll is mistakes, and making mistakes work for you. The people who shy away from mistakes and play it safe have no business playing rock 'n' roll.

Rock music seems to be very fragmented these days, I can't say that I ever really hear anything that just knocks me over.

The music's rehearsed a lot. All people think about is, they think, in rock 'n' roll, they get the music off right and they think it's okay standing, looking macho. Well, it's not. That's boring. If you want to be a performer you've got to do a lot more work than that.

Your ideas dry up sometimes, and you get lazy sometimes 'cause you're around the same people. That was the good thing about having different directors. You had to stay on your toes.

Indie rock is just as susceptible - if not more susceptible - to all the gross things about people becoming total ass clowns in music, and only worrying about money and image. I'm not interested in being a part of that.

I love rock and roll, so put another dime in the juke box, baby.

You can really bring so much more to rock'n'roll. Rock'n'roll is the most accepting, is the most fertile ground for creating hybrid forms of music and hybrid forms of show, if you draw from many, many different wells. It's just unfortunate so many rock'n'roll stars only bother to learn how to play like Led Zeppelin and/or the Rolling Stones and that's what you get, disc after disc and show after show.

A lot of people just capitulate and say, "Well, that's just the way things are." I think that can be deadly for creative people.

I wouldn't say rock & roll is dead but the current music made by young people isn't really rock & roll.

I like a lot of old films, I like a lot old music, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that I like the idea of knowing what happens before, so that I can understand it.

Once you're on stage you can't go back, even when things go wrong people expect you to stay there and entertain them. When all else fails, you've got to try tap dancing.

Who knows why women aren't - obviously, rock 'n' roll, I keep saying this, but aggressive and in a way that is sexually aggressive, like the singer is the aggressor. And people don't want to see girls in that position. They would rather go after them.

Every limbo boy and girl, all around the limbo world. Gonna do the limbo rock, all around the limbo clock.

It is curious to be treated by the old-fashioned people as a criminal because my thoughts and ways are beyond them.

Maybe people would be surprised to know that I listen to old Neil Diamond albums from time to time. The man rocks. I defy anyone to prove me wrong.

Critics and fans use the music of their youth as reference points. For years, people seriously wondered who "the next Beatles" were going to be, and classic rock bands were the de facto yardstick for rock quality.

By the eighties, a lot of radio stations had started playing "Sixties" music. They called it "Classic Rock," because they knew we'd be upset if they came right out and called it what it is, namely "middle-aged-person nostalgia music.

Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? ...a good question might be not why do people create? But why do people not create or innovate?

I believe that in any initiative, you can't have a flavor of the month. When you believe something is profound in a company, you can not be a logical leader. You have to go to the lunatic fringe. There is no way that logic is what you need to change people.

It's the lack of ambition that cripples most people, and makes them so pedestrian in the advertising/creative business

We came out right in the middle of the hard-rock period... it was hard-rock everywhere! But we were ready to make our music, you know?And it was such a turn around, I guess it caught people by surprise.