Eddie Van Halen Quotes

I had no aspirations to be a musician, but I picked up a guitar for two seconds and haven't put it down since.

I wrote music. I was in a hardcore band when I was 14, and I wasn't good enough to play anyone else's songs, so I had to write my own.

The only thing I have ever really cared to be known as is a musician.

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

I think the people who are saying jazz has to sound a particular way, or, 'What you're doing isn't jazz,' are just scared because they can't do it. A lot of them just aren't talented enough to do anything new, honestly.

Music is so important to me that that's got to be the only way I can do it. In the purest possible way.

This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.

You can play a shoestring if you're sincere.

If one uses music that one does not really love, then one will not succeed in making it one's own.

Music became my focus. At 13, I was jamming with my mates. At 15, I was playing clubs.

I don't always have to be on what is the newest in music is. I'm slowly educating myself in music. For me, I feel more free in not knowing everything in what I'm doing. You can start making up too many rules for yourself. It should just be love and fun and feeling good.

Wanting to be a rock star, I get it. I'm like, 'Oh, my God, dude! The freedom!'

David Lee Roth had the idea that if you covered a successful song, you were half way home. C'mon - Van Halen doing 'Dancing in the Streets'? It was stupid. I started feeling like I would rather bomb playing my own songs than be successful playing someone else's music.

I've always loved music, but I never really played anything. After 'Walk the Line' and learning to play guitar, and having that sense of performing, I think that certainly opened the door for me, for music.

What's cool about indie rock is that one band can do effectively the same thing as another band, and one band nails it, and the other one doesn't. I like that elusiveness.

Thomas Dolby is part mad scientist, part nature boy, and entirely moved by the power of music.

The great love of my life is music.

I'm by no means a pianist. I think that's safe to say, but the piano, for me, I would say it's the enabler. It gave me what I needed and gives me what I need in order to write a song. And I think playing or improvising on the piano is where I feel most liberated and sort of less conscious of all my insecurities or inadequacies.

I've always made music - pretty much since I was born.

Success and the art of making music are two different things for me.

I've always been in music. I started out in music, and I will continue to do music.

I lived for music since I could think.

It's funny, because music is one of those things it is natural to go into. You hear it so much growing up, it kind of permeates you and eventually you spew out some music of your own.

My music is like my freedom space.

I started trying to write songs when I was 8 or 9 years old.