Musical Revolutionaries Quotes

R&B needs to see a new light. It doesn't have to be pigeonholed.

Before the Beatles, America was musically a very conservative country. You can see film footage of people at a baseball game, they all had hats and ties on, and the women were dressed up like they were going to church. That was the America that I started getting interested in musically.

Testify' went from a clean Motown song to straight psychedelic. Loud and feedback and people was loving it, because Motown was ending now.

When I grew up, there was one music: rock n' roll. Somewhere along the line, there was a separation. I don't know why it happened, but it did happen.

Elvis Presley and Puccini shall return.

Rock n' roll really belongs to all America. It really doesn't belong to one city.

Of course we've lost so many superstars who've made jazz what it is. We've lost so many musicians who created new things and changed the way we think about music and who took jazz to a new level. So jazz is suffering from that. But we still have a lot of incredible people playing jazz in the world. We have a lot of people leading the way.

I haven't written a score that's going to change the Western world or the musical as we presently know it.

If you look at the history of popular music, the most successful musicians have started out being really marginal and esoteric. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Madonna. Prince. Bruce Springsteen. Fleetwood Mac. David Bowie. Public Enemy. Nirvana.

Who am I to sit here and say I'm going to change the face of music?