Great music seems to come from a lot of angst, and that angst is from great musicians getting together with intense chemistry. When that chemistry isn't there, people tend not to write great music.
A band is like a marriage - you don't know why it works, but when it does, everything feels right.
Without a doubt, even when I play with Black Label, when we have different guys I play with, everyone always brings their own magic, their own flavor to the soup, hands down.
With Fleetwood Mac, it's an amazing chemistry that we have on stage.
We all came to the conclusion that we have an undeniable chemistry musically, that we might not ever find again. The mix of friction and camaraderie channels good songs, performances and laughs.
The first album I started out, I just did everything completely alone. I think it has to do with confidence. The more confidence you develop in your own sound, the more you can open up and alchemize that with other people, just set it free, and not feel challenged by that.
My dream artists to collaborate with are probably Cee Lo Green and Imogen Heap. They're completely out of my genre but they're both musical geniuses.
A great conductor is an alchemical force: someone who can absorb the historical weight of a famous melody, the expectations of an audience, and the mercurial brilliance of a host of musicians, and shape them all to his or her interpretative ends.
I think if you can get the right bunch of people together, and you're in the room and it just feels right, then the music will come.
Every band needs it's own special chemistry. And Bez was a very good chemist.
We've always said Psychic TV's music is the sum total of who's in it at the time.
With Led Zeppelin, it has always been that mystique of how the music is done - how it works, why it works.
Dilla could flip a boring record and make you feel like you were flying.
The most important ingredient to making a song work is the magic. You've got a melody, you've got words, but on the more successful songs, there's a sort of magic glow that just happens and you can feel it happening. It just makes the songs sort of roll out.
You don't see me in the club. And the reason is because I would rather be in the studio mixing these musical potions. Now sometimes they blow up in my face, and there's a lot of smoke. But that's who I am. Music is what I do.
I've had writing sessions with people, but I've never had one where you're just there, and you start making a song, and then it's too good to be true that something really cool will come out of this.
Music is not math. It's science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.
I've been in the studio when you go through a track and you run down a track and you know even before the singer starts singing, you know the track is swinging... you know you have a multimillion-seller hit - and what you're working on suddenly has magic.
That creates the magic, and that's the wonderment of the musical process and how precious that is.
Michael John's music is soul-stirring. It gets inside the deepest part of you; it's almost a chemical reaction.
We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun. We are not afraid of the darkness. We trust that the moon shall guide us. We are determining the future at this very moment. We know that the heart is the philosopher's stone. Our music is our alchemy.
Sometimes a producer and an artist get together and they make magic like Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson. As far as my own music career - you could liken my chemistry with Timbaland to Marty Scorsese and Robert De Niro.
What intrigues me is that you get a good bunch of musicians together, and interesting things will happen.
When Free came together, there was a creative magic around us, something unique and different.
George had performed musical alchemy, distilling the essence of Christmas into music. Adding a lyric which told the tale of betrayed love was a masterstroke and, as he did so often, he touched hearts.
