Steve Harris Quotes

You don't know what inspires you. You like to think you know what inspires you, but in the final analysis I don't think you really do. It's great to look at a blank sheet of paper, you know, and walk up to an instrument and not know what's gonna happen. It's the most challenging thing I do.

Artwork is not like a commercial business; there is no such thing as a schedule for art. You can't hurry art.

I used to look at composing music as problem solving. But as I get older, it's not about problem solving anymore. There are no solutions, because there are no problems. You just turn the tap and it flows out.

I never have a plan of what I am going to draw.

Any talk of 'craft' makes me laugh. My music looks outward; it does not gaze upon itself in admiration. Artisanal is for cheesemakers. I don't know anything about music theory. Every time I approach my guitar, it's like the first time. There's no craft in that.

I guess, like, the whole thing with music is - you're a little bit in control but not fully in control. Which is kind of the fun of it.

I never have a clear goal or a theme when it comes to writing an album.

I try not to think too hard about music. I like to see where it goes. I try not to give it a direction. I figure out what it is as it's forming. I don't have any goal in mind other than to make the best music I can.

I let the song guide me. I move through the space that I'm given rather than trying to make an impression on the material. I'm curious to learn from the music.

When I sit down to make music, I try to enter a flow; I always open a blank session and just make something that I feel like making.

We never sit down before we start making a record and talk about this new sonic palette that we are going to try to explore. We always let the record kind of reveal itself to us over time.

So the actual riffing came out of us just sitting there and doing it the way I think some people think we really did it, which is all spontaneously, and it really was.

I wrote 'She's a Lady' on the back of a TWA menu, flying back from London after doing Tom Jones's TV show. Jones's manager wanted me to write him a song. If I have an idea and I don't have a pad of paper, I'll write on whatever is available. What's the difference? Paper is paper.

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.

As artists, we are so not in control most of the time of the content or the narrative of our characters, and sometimes writing takes a turn and it's not something we necessarily have control over. It's just a lot of random dumb luck, so when things click, you've just got to enjoy it.

It's a weird thing when you make records. You try to hear it before you make it, so you walk into the studio with this idea of what you expect to happen, and that usually changes. That usually turns into something else, and that's a good thing.

Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can't be taught.

I sometimes don't know what I'm writing when I start writing it, on some level.

I prefer to surprise myself as I'm writing. I'm not interested in it if I already know where it's going. So I have only the most general sense of what I'm doing when I start a story. I sometimes have a destination in mind, but how the story is going to go from Point A to Point Z is something I make up as I go along.

I don't sit down and say I'm going to write a song about this or that. They are never mapped out.

That's what I find with any good song, you just have to let it happen. Out of about twenty songs you might write, one of any significance. It might be thirty or forty, but I just keep churning them out and churning them out in hope that one of them will stick.

Typically I go in the studio and whatever I'm contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don't come in with lyrics... I just go in and let it happen.

I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman.

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.

Going into a shoot not fully knowing what I want to do - that excitement, that thing that happens, is just so powerful and makes such great pictures.