Musical Decline Quotes

I was always very grateful to 'em and am grateful to 'em now. I went back a couple of years ago and did their 20th anniversary show. But the longer I stayed on Hee Haw, the worse things got for me musically.

I look at my career and I feel I have the potential to maybe mature into a Samuel Jackson-type older cat, and people will still respect me and say 'Yo, Ice-T was wild', into my old age. And why not? I don't necessarily think I'll be rapping in 10 years.

It's hard to describe how bloody awful music was, how desperately bad it was, how our 1960s heroes had become boring and useless. Not only were they bad - they were badly dressed.

I kind of question whether to say this or not, but it's almost like the Allman Brothers turned into an Allman Brothers tribute band.

I'm a huge Cure fan. I love the Cure. The scales being tipped to when they weren't on a major label compared to when they were seems pretty meaningless. I had the good fortune of having them go before me and seeing their careers, musically at least, lose something. Like a novel written by a dead hand.

Most people, from their second album on, find it much harder to be as spontaneously creative as they were with their first couple of records, and some people only have one thing that they do.

I didn't end up some sad, tragic guy singing in a lounge somewhere. I never went out and took big money for nostalgia and became like an oldies act.

I used to play the piano by listening to it - like Chopin pieces, when I was, like, a little kid - and then the minute my parents got me lessons to read music, I couldn't do it anymore.

The end of the Nineties was an unhappy Primus camp. I hit a creative stagnation that wasn't helping us forward, and the personal elements, it just was time to stop.

Bobby [Fosse] was very difficult to work with, he wanted to be a big star at MGM, but it was the end of making musical movies at the time.

Once in a while, the thumb that fits over the neck of the guitar kinda bothers me a little bit, but not that much yet. I figure in time I won't do much because of my age.

I went to Juilliard as a clarinet major, and somewhere between the beginning and the end, I stopped playing it. I asked myself who was I reaching... I just fell out of love with it.

And what unity is to be had, at a time when orchestras are dying out, and when opera houses are about to close their doors; what's going to come next - when nothing new in music, for the orchestra, is truly lasting: pieces are performed once, and then they're thrown away.

There is a limited supply of excellent songs, but I am not the only one. Paul McCartney, one of the best songwriters of all time, has only produced manure for the past 25 years. Rock musicians over 30 only produce unimportant material.

Both of us knew the band had run its course. We were both unhappy doing it, but I think the way Andrew [Ridgeley] was being treated as the less important half of the duo had finally taken its toll on him.

Anyway, you know, when Richard Meltzer said rock and roll died in '68, what he means is Jefferson Airplane were no longer his buddies, that's what he really means. He means it in a political way: that was when the artists and the audience found themselves on different levels.

And what if in the future we're at war again, or we still haven't elected a non-white or non-male president, or the Rolling Stones are still dragging their tired old butts on stage? That would depress me way too much.

I was afraid of the sophomore slump even before our first record came out. It was a very real fear because I'd watched so many bands I'd loved in the past not deliver. I knew it was a very real thing. I didn't know why it happens, but I'd been thinking about it a lot.

It's something that jazz has gotten away from, and it's unfortunate. Players aren't physical anymore.

I am frozen musically somewhere around 2004.

What's wrong with musicals now is all the gifted men who've died of AIDS-who would otherwise be here today creating great theater.

For me, none of the albums after 'Tusk' quite had it. I think we lost something after that.

We don't make glamorous movies today. Everything now is very realistic, artistic - and depressing. When is the last time you you saw a wonderful musical or a fabulous fantasy?

I tap danced for ten years before I began to understand people don't make musicals anymore. All I wanted to do was be at MGM working for Arthur Freed or Gene Kelly or Vincent Minelli. Historical and geographical constraints made this impossible. Slowly but surely the pen became mightier than the double pick-up time step with shuffle.