Musical Prodigies Quotes

Western culture is what gave us Mozart, and Da Vinci, and Wagner, and Beethoven.

How many Beethovens are there that just for lack of the training, the world doesn't get exposed to.

When I think of musical geniuses, I think of Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson and Prince. That's who comes to mind.

I haven't really heard much that's impressed me the way it was when I first heard Ray Charles or somebody like that. That was really an impression.

Classical - perhaps I should say 'orchestral' - music is so digital, so cut up, rhythmically, pitchwise and in terms of the roles of the musicians. It's all in little boxes. The reason you get child prodigies in chess, arithmetic, and classical composition is that they are all worlds of discontinuous, parceled-up possibilities.

If you got every single artist in the world in one room, and you put Miles on one side and Prince on the other side, those are the two people that everybody would be trying to get a glimpse of. And Michael Jackson would be the other one.

We're the most talented musical island ever.

Elvis wore a halo. Otis Redding did, too. You knew you were playing with a star when you played with them.

Beethoven for listening; Liszt, Chopin, and Beethoven for playing as well as Bach and Prokofiev and so on. If I kept going, this list would spiral. It's as wide as literature; in fact, it is probably wider.

The musicians I really looked up to as a kid were the ones who could play everything.

There are people who are really great musicians. I've met a lot of them. And I'm not a great musician. I'm adequate enough to be able to throw some chords together and write songs, but I can only feel that because I'm expressing something honestly, or in a heartfelt way, or in some way that's not bullshit, that in some way the songs have merit.

There was a lot of other young players around at that time when I was coming, but there was older people like Blind Lemon, which was one of my favorites. I don't know, just seemed like everybody I heard could play better than me.