If I can't do an opera as well as most people, I won't do it at all. I don't want to touch Wagner because I think a lot of people do it a hell of a lot better than I could. I do the operas I think I can do, know something about.
The way I make music, I know what I'm doing, because I been doing this for so long. This is the only thing I'm good at.
I realize that R&B is what I do best, and I'm comfortable with that.
Mozart encompasses the entire domain of musical creation, but I've got only the keyboard in my poor head.
I'm a producer first, and I know music, so I can jump on any song, whether it's pop or urban, without changing me. Whatever I do, I'm gonna make it classic.
My taste in coffee has got better with age, and so has my taste in music.
The guitar is the easiest instrument to play and the hardest to play well.
You have to be very strong to play my music. The drummer has to be in great shape. Same with the guitarist. You have to be a monster to play with Chubby!
There's a million people who can go out and play the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto brilliantly, but we're the only ones who can do 'A Little Nightmare Music.'
I love Lauryn Hill when she first came out with her solo project because it felt like she just knew what she was doing.
My first two records are so simply constructed. The reason isn't because I wanted to make simple music. It's because I don't really have the chops.
I'm not technically proficient enough to attempt all kinds of music.
I don't much listen to music as I study it: who's doing what, who wrote it.
I've been a musician longer than I've been an actor.
We're a live band. It's what we do best.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is the only musician who had as much knowledge asgenius, and as much genius as knowledge.
I don't really admire musicianship per se - as is obvious from my own playing.
Guitarists shouldn't get too riled up about all of the great players that were left off of 'Rolling Stone Magazines' list of the Greatest Guitar Players of all Time' ... Rolling Stone is published for people who read the magazine because they don't know what to wear.
Some people play steel string beautifully, but I'm not exactly a world-class picker.
Composers are not all good conductors.
The ultimate guitar players can play every scale in the book.
You can't compete with Sweets' sound and time feel. It's impossible.
I've paid my dues in the classical trenches.
I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son (W A Mozart)is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition.
I was a lucky kid. You could have got 10 kids to be in The Byrds who were better than I was.
