When I first started making music, it was learning other people's songs and putting them onto four-track. Like Beatles songs and stuff. When I started writing, I used the singing side of the production as a vehicle for melody and lyrical ideas.
I don't like hearing Beatles songs in commercials. It almost renders them useless. I think, 'Oh God, another one bites the dust.'
I don't know any Beatles songs. My dad never listened to Elvis or Sting or Bowie. Any band name that's on a t-shirt, I probably won't know their music, like AC/DC or whatever. I don't know what that is. As a kid, I would sing along to artists like Tania Maria.
Every wedding is slightly different from the other. But you always get to meet the funny uncle and the weirdo relatives, and there's always someone trying to beat you up for not playing enough Beatles songs or something.
It was great fun to be able to work with so many different artists. And I'm paying a tribute to the Beatles. I've just recorded some of their songs.
Funny songs aren't usually that good. Like Weird Al and maybe a couple of Beatles songs, but it's kind of hard to bring humor into rock music in an interesting way.
Woody Allen movies are like Beatles songs. I can't name my favorite without you immediately naming a better one.
I do remember actually learning chords to Beatles songs. I thought they were great songwriters.
Any Beatles song is perfect. It gets to you right away.
I could hum Beatles songs before I could talk - not very well, but sort of.
I think I initially started inventing characters in my songs because I didn't want to write directly about myself. Also, as a kid, I loved all the character names in Beatles songs, like Eleanor Rigby and Lovely Rita and Mean Mr. Mustard and Maxwell and Rocky Raccoon.
Nobody can beat those songs on 'Abbey Road.'
I translated Beatles songs for my English class.
If you think about it, for almost any moment, any mood that you might be in, there's probably a Beatles song that will address that mood, that feeling, that set of emotions. I don't know that that can be said about very many groups, if any.
They should invent some way to tape-record your dreams. I've written songs in my dreams that were Beatles songs. Then I'd wake up and they'd be gone.
People have made a living deconstructing Lennon and The Beatles songs because of their compositional sophistication. But what's so exciting about John is that he never had any of that training on musical theory; something just spoke to him, and he just knew what sounded right.
I mean, Beatles songs were two and a half minutes long, and they're fantastic.
My grandfather lived across the garden from us, and in his attic he had a lot of radios, appliances and inventions that he had made over 50 years, such as a keyboard called a clavioline, which can be heard on some Beatles songs - it was popular in the 60s. So we had all that at home.
