"Let no one imagine that in owning a recording he has the music. The very practice of music is a celebration that we own nothing."
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Music quotes
Music
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Music quotes (page 51 of 156)
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"Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical."
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"We are living in a period in which many people have changed their mind about what the use of music is or could be for them. Something that doesn't speak or talk like a human being, that doesn't know its definition in the dictionary or its theory in the schools, that expresses itself simply by the fact of its vibrations. People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is."
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"A finished work is exactly that, requires resurrection."
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"If art were to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness."
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"I think it's the best thing I've ever done. I think it's realistic, and it's true to the me that has been developing over the years. I like first-person music."
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"In Paris in 1964 was the first time I ever heard Dylan at all. Paul got the record (The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan) from a French DJ. For three weeks in Paris we didn't stop playing it. We all went potty about Dylan."
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"I don't mind people putting us down, because if everybody really liked us, it would be a bore. You've got to have people putting you down. It doesn't give any edge to it if everybody just falls flat on their face saying, "You're great." We enjoy some of the criticisms as well, they're quite funny; some of the clever criticisms, not the ones that don't know anything, but some of the clever ones are quite fun."
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"From our earliest days in Liverpool, George and I on the one hand and Paul on the other had different musical tastes. Paul preferred 'pop type' music and we preferred what is now called 'underground'. This may have led to arguments, particularly between Paul and George, but the contrast in tastes, I'm sure, did more good than harm, musically speaking, and contributed to our success."
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"Lack of feeling in an emotional sense is responsible for the way some singers do our songs. They don't understand and are too old to grasp the feeling. Beatles are really the only people who can play Beatle music."
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"We never write anything with themes. We just write the same rubbish all the time."
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"The whole thing died in my mind long before the rumpus started. We used to believe the Beatles myth just as much as the public and we were in love with them just the same way. But we were four individuals who eventually recovered our individualities after being submerged in a myth."
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"If I had the capabilities of being something other than I am, I would. It's no fun being an artist. You know what it's like, writing, it's torture."
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"The whole Beatle thing was just beyond comprehension. When 'Help' came out, I was actually crying out for help. Most people think it's just a fast rock 'n roll song. I didn't realize it at the time; I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie. But later, I knew I really was crying out for help."
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"At the (record company) meeting Paul just kept mithering on about what we were going to do, so in the end I just said, 'I think you're daft. I want a divorce.'"
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"The thing is, in America, it just seemed ridiculous - I mean, the idea of having a hit record over there, ... It was just something you could never do."
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"It ( In My Life ) was the first song that I wrote that was really, consciously about my life.... up until then, it had been all glib and throwaway."
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"For a long time I wasn't listening to music, to the rock and roll stuff on the radio, because it would cause me to get sweaty. It would bring back memories I didn't want to know about, or I would get that feeling that I'm not alive 'cause I'm not making it. And if it was good, I hated it 'cause I wasn't doing it. And if it was bad, I was furious 'cause I could've done it better."
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"I only ever asked two people to work with me as a partner. One was Paul McCartney and the other Yoko Ono. Paul and me were the Beatles."
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"We thought being offered the M.B.E. [Member of the Order of the British Empire] was as funny as everybody else thought it was. Why? What for? We didn't believe it. It was a part we didn't want. We all met and agreed it was daft."
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