Musical Adaptation Quotes

What I do is, I look at rock guitar players, and I say to myself, 'What is this guy doing? What does he have that can inspire me?' I try to see what other people are doing and take what they have and turn it and twist it into my own thing.

After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that's how I ended up just being a saxophone player.

It took me a long time to accept the idea that the guitar can take the place of a singer.

I'm writing a musical. I am. I was able to buy the rights to 'The Preacher's Wife,' which starred Whitney Houston... I'm writing a whole new score and all the lyrics for it.

At the age of 16, something happened with my finger and the doctor told me, you never can be a organist or pianist, so think about what you do with music.

I may sing the same songs for over 40 years now but I always sing them in different ways in order to keep the excitement and passion alive.

I was never really a DJ... I just kinda figured it all out at once as I started to tour. I was making music and producing and I just had to start to DJ as I got more into touring.

Music has to change. I don't want to stay the same forever.

Whether it's animated, whether it's live-action, whether it's Broadway, whether it's television, a musical is a musical is a musical. So, pretty much you approach the songs in pretty much the same way. The difference might be that in a film you have a close up. On stage you don't. So there are more songs on the stage because the songs are kind of the close up.

I must have written 15 lyrics for 'The Lion King,' and only five or six were used. Some were scenes that disappeared, some were earlier versions of songs that didn't work, or else the characters changed.

When I first heard 'A Christmas Story, the musical,' I thought, Oh, that could be really good. It just felt like it fit. Some films lend themselves well to other formats, some don't, but there are so many fantasy sequences in the film, and Ralphie's such a dreamer as a character, I thought they could really lend themselves to being set pieces.

So I did 'Something Happened on the Way to Heaven' and the original version is a ballad. The original Phil record is uptempo but we slowed it down and made it a ballad.

Music has to keep moving. But I was lucky. For me there was always something around the corner.

When I was 17, I rewrote the songs for a musicalized version of 'Love's Labour's Lost.'

More often than not, changes had to be made in order for a song to make sense, and by the end of it, it would just be something different. Lyrically, I am usually fairly confused until something is finished, and then it makes perfect sense to me.

I'm very aware of the fact that Broadway musicals being brought to the screen are very few and far between, and it's important to continue that relationship between Broadway and film. It's a privilege and an honor for me to be instrumental in some way in keeping that alive.

No, it's not dissatisfaction that inspires me to tinker with my songs, it's just restlessness.

A lot of people ask me where music is going today. I think it's going in short phrases. If you listen, anybody with an ear can hear that. Music is always changing. It changes because of the times and the technology that's available, the material that things are made of, like plastic cars instead of steel. So when you hear an accident today it sounds different, not all the metal colliding like it was in the forties and fifties. Musicians pick up sounds and incorporate that into their playing, so the music that they make will be different.

I'm left handed and I'm playing a right handed kit... That's why everyone thought, 'Wow, he's a genius,' but all I was doing was trying to play backwards... It's one of those mad accidents, you can't learn it.

I'm really not a songwriter, so if I hear a song, I feel it and like it, I'll do it. But I'll make it the way I want to hear it.

I thought about doing '36 Chambers' on Broadway.

Jazz is an octopus. It will take whatever it can use and it will work with it.

Music is always gonna change; it's just a matter of keeping up with the times.

You could do a 'Les Mis'-type musical about Hamilton, but it would have to be 12 hours long, because the amount of words on the bars when you're writing a typical song - that's maybe got 10 words per line.

I only have one note, let's be honest. But I'll play a different version of that one note.