Musical Resilience Quotes

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.

I think that music has an endless life.

The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body.

I didn't quit Slipknot. I would never have quit Slipknot, ever.

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

Most artists lose their voice, their hair, and their bands. That's not going to happen to me.

I guess fortunate that I'm still around and I emphasize I guess because you never can tell what musicians would be playing had they been around as long as I have.

You can't kill Rock 'n' Roll. It's here to stay

I never gave up on country music because I knew what I was doing was not that bad.

We've been called the soundtrack of people's lives. There have been lots of downs, of course but mostly ups. That EW&F is still clicking at least twenty years on and has a life of its own, that the songs have stayed alive - we're like a good book that people go back to.

Hopefully, as a band, it will grow and develop for a good length of time.

It's very important to go through periods where you sound just rotten and you know it, and you have to persevere or give up.

There is nothing like a Bach fugue to remove me from a discordant moment... only Bach hold up fresh and strong after repeated playing. I can always return to Bach when the other records weary me.

Blues ain't never going anywhere. It can get slow, but it ain't going nowhere.

That's the miracle of music. No one can reinterpret a Picasso, but a song can be remixed and covered and interpreted in an infinite number of ways. It's a living thing.

I'll be making music 'til the day I die. I've done all kinds of stuff, and more is coming.

I've played the Greek classics; I've played the English classics. I promise you, I'm not complacent, because I hope to be playing all sorts of stuff that I've never played before while the mind - and the body - still functions.

No matter what comes your way, being a musician, you will never, ever learn to play it all.

I think rock & roll has prepared me for a lot of flexibility.

That rock ‘n’roll, eh? That rock’n’roll, it just won’t go away. It might hibernate from time to time, sink back into the swamp. I think the cyclical nature of the universe in which it exists demands that acquiesce to some of its rules. But it’s always waiting there, just around the corner,” he added. “Ready to make its way back through the sludge and smash through the glass ceiling, looking better than ever. Yeah, that rock’n’roll, it seems like it’s faded away sometimes, but it will never die. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

If you're in a band for long enough, you see your bandmates at their best and their worst, and if you can stick together through that, you're basically family to each other.

I want to make sure that I make music that lasts. I've been experimenting. I've been writing.

To have a body of work is a blessing - when you have songs that have been around generation after generation that they call timeless music, you can work that for a long time.

You have to really have the will to hang onto the first note as it is being played, and then really stay with it and take the flight, as it were, you know, for the duration of the piece.

I was able to endure and play a special part in music history. And I always managed to keep working, even if I wasn't a big solo artist.