Top 94 Great Musician Quotes
#1. When I hear a great musician, I can feel his life inside the music.
John McLaughlin
#2. I'm such a copycat."I want to try and do this like the Donovan song 'Changes'," or "I want to do this bit from Van Morrison." I don't know how else to illustrate something, because I'm not a super-great musician. In that way, I'm more like the producer.
Eleanor Friedberger
#3. Pablo Casals is a great musician in all he does: a cellist without equal, and extraordinary conductor and composer with something to say. I have been profoundly impressed by all I have heard of his work, but he is a musician of this stature because he is also a great man.
Albert Schweitzer
#4. The soul of the great musician can only be expressed in music.
Margaret Fuller
#5. The way we got Phil Collins for 'Tarzan' was that we heard around the studio that he was looking for a Disney project, and we got him. It seemed like a perfect match. Phil is a great musician.
Kevin Lima
#6. Kenny Burrell is a great musician and his music has helped to make me what I am today.
Stevie Wonder
#7. I feel very honored to be playing with Bill Pierce. He's such a great musician.
Kevin Eubanks
#8. You can't make a great musician or a great photographer if the magic isn't there.
Eve Arnold
#9. I was always funny, but I wasn't a great musician, and I wanted to be a musician way more than I wanted to be a comic. I just didn't think comedians were cool when I was a kid.
Greg Behrendt
#10. My dad wasn't the biggest role model, but he was a great musician and I loved him very much. He was a character.
Randy Houser
#11. The world has lost a great musician who will always be an inspiration to me and those at OBEY GIANT.
Shepard Fairey
#12. It is not a dreamlike state, but the somehow insulated state, that a great musician achieves in a great performance. He's aware of where he is and what he's doing, but his mind is on the playing of the instrument with an internal sense of rightness.
Arnold Palmer
#14. If you strive to become a good human being with the qualities of generosity, humility and having reverence for life ... just maybe you'll become a great musician.
Charlie Haden
#15. Yeah, we try to get the best musicians possible, and Justin [Robinson] is a great musician, man, a great player. You must have been surprised to see him out there, then.
Common
#16. A great musician is just a thief who doesn't get caught
Buddy Rich
#17. A great musician once told me that one should never play a single note without hearing it, feeling that it is true, thinking it beautiful.
Brenda Ueland
#18. When I auditioned for my high school band the band director was excited because my father was known to be a great musician. When he heard me, he said 'Are you sure you're Ellis's son?'
Wynton Marsalis
#19. I want them to come away with discovering the music inside them. And not thinking about themselves as jazz musicians, but thinking about themselves as good human beings, striving to be a great person and maybe they'll become a great musician.
Charlie Haden
#20. Jonathan Kreisberg is a great musician whose playing and writing always tell a story. His formidable technique and intellect never get in the way, but only serve the agenda of the heart.
Joe Locke
#21. Dude, if you want to be a great musician, you have to try heroin. You'll see. It's like being back in the womb.
Dave Mustaine
#22. You can't fake this music. You might be a great singer or a great musician but, in the need, that's got nothing to do with it. It's how you connect to the songs and to the history behind them.
Etta James
#23. Jay Ashby is simply a great musician!
Paul Simon
#24. He wasn't a great father. He was a great musician. That's always been a touchy one, and it will be until I can find the answer, but I don't know if there is one.
Julian Lennon
#25. All my momma's people were very musical. My grandpa, who was the Pentecostal minister, he was a great musician. He played the fiddle, he played the piano.
Dolly Parton
#26. I listen to all sorts of music, but I'm not musically talented. Everyone expects me to be a good singer or musician, but I really am terrible. I'm a great dancer, though.
Jade Jagger
#27. When you have the opportunity to make music with great musicians, take it. That's it. That's the only reason I need, really.
Joss Stone
#28. Maybe the idea of being a rockstar or being the one who's recording or playing, sort of doesn't really matter as much anymore, when you're surrounded by great musicians who bring their spirit, their own talent.
Adrian Grenier
#29. Not only was he not mad, but he was a musician, and my favorite men had always been musicians or writers or anything that involved the creative process and behaving like tortured artists ... I found financial insecurity a great aphrodisiac.
Marian Keyes
#30. I knew a lot of my musicians used to take coke. I never saw them. They would hide it from me, so I wasn't really aware of it. Creatively, I don't think it was that great.
Giorgio Moroder
#31. He led quite a great life, ... He was an Old Testament figure railing against the establishment - a Jewish guy from New York who became a Buddhist, a poet, a musician.
Tom Hayden
#32. In ancient times the greatest of the prophets were great musicians.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
#33. I became a musician because I love music, and that is what has sustained me; it's not because I thought it was a great way to make a living. Music saved my life.
David Sanborn
#34. If it takes me 10 years to be the musician I want to be, great.
Demi Lovato
#35. I have seen so many bands and musicians fade away, especially the ones in my early days that treated me and my bands with contempt for no other reason than that they were headlining the show, not all though, with great exceptions such as Slade and Vinegar Joe.
Bernie Marsden
#36. Ohhhso hard to say, but George Harrison was pretty darn special. Such a great guybeautiful person and amazing songwriter/musician. A real honor for me to have played on his last tour
Chuck Leavell
#37. Well, in order for me to be successful ... In order to be a great artist - musician, actor, painter, whatever - you must be able to be private in public at all times.
Lady Gaga
#38. Every orchestra is different. Sometimes, you're blown away by a particular musician. If I'm playing the Brahms concerto, it's crucial to have a great oboe player, because we work in tandem.
Joshua Bell
#39. We use important words too frequently and they lose value; for instance, charm and great. An actor or musician often is proclaimedgreat when we really mean he is outstanding.
Eleanor Robson Belmont
#40. My intention when I came into this industry was to be a musician, not necessarily a recording artist, just a musician in general. And that's the reason I went to college and got my degree, which has been great for me. It's helped me a lot with my career.
Jon Secada
#41. Nobody gives a crap if we're great musicians.
Frank Zappa
#42. A great hang is mandatory. But in all of my years as a traveling musician, on a whole it's been pretty damn magical. There have been a couple duds along the way, but most time, I'm in awe of the guys who want to play on my records.
Shelby Lynne
#43. I want to be taken seriously as the type of musician that plays stuff like an electric rake. I mean, how seriously do you take someone like Spike Jones? They take him pretty seriously - a really good musician who made a great contribution in terms of humor, which is part of what I try to do too.
Eugene Chadbourne
#44. All five hundred boys want to go out with the same ten anorexic girls." She said, "I'm a good musician, but not many guys are looking for a girl that plays great Bach preludes.
Mary Pipher
#45. The Americans expect great things of me ... If the small Czech nation can have such musicians, they say, why could not they, too, when their country and people is so immense.
Antonin Dvorak
#46. I think my biggest musical hero growing up was probably Ian MacKaye. He set a great example for all of us local musicians. Still, to this day, I see him as the best example of a right-on musician.
Dave Grohl
#47. music is the great love of the People. If we sing a beautiful song, if we faithfully remember all the words, the People will never abandon us. Without the musician, all life would be loneliness.
Madeleine Thien
#48. I also had a brother who was like me a musician and a composer. A man of great talent, far more gifted than I. He died very young ... he killed himself in the prime of his life.
Gustav Mahler
#49. To have read the greatest works of any great poet, to have beheld or heard the greatest works of any great painter or musician, is a possession added to the best things of life.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
#50. If you are having trouble making a chord, get a book, that is how I learned. There are guitar tuning apps so you can tune your guitar, and just learn how to play along with your records. And it's great to be able to play along with another musician. That is like trial by fire.
Joan Jett
#51. Sometimes being a musician has little to do with viability and everything to do with survivability. Many musicians start out great, and they wind up out of the business in 10 years.
Todd Rundgren
#52. I haven't done any genealogical exploring myself, though members of my family and also of my husband's family have traced things back. I have a great grandfather on my mother's side who was a musician, and I'd like to know more about his life.
Kim Edwards
#53. Well, my paper has asked me to do a series: Lives of the Great Musicians, reading time 2 minutes.
Dodie Smith
#54. Most things in my life I had before leaving home. Values, support, great family. I was shaped at an early age. A musician playing guitar, I wanted to be a folk singer.
Sissy Spacek
#55. Bob Dylan is quite a songwriter, and a great singer and musician. I won't bother with comparing myself to him, but I will say that I heard his records at a very young age and I still listen to all his records.
Frank Black
#56. When I went off to college, I was expecting to be a concert musician. In music school I heard all of these kids who were just unbelievable. And I understand that you can be very, very good, but there's something that separates very, very good from great, and I knew that I wasn't great.
Condoleezza Rice
#57. To do something that you feel in your heart that's great, you need to make a lot of mistakes. Anything that's successful is a series of mistakes.
Green Day
#58. Grace Kelly plays with intelligence, wit and feeling. She has a great amount of natural ability and the ability to adapt. That is the hallmark of a first-class jazz musician.
Wynton Marsalis
#59. I'm just lucky to have great parents. My sister's an actress. My brother's a musician. I found it hard growing up in such a ... creatively driven family. I wanted to have this thing to create, myself.
Grace Gummer
#60. I knew nothing of the real life of a musician, but I seemed to see myself standing in front of great crowds of people, playing my accordion.
Lawrence Welk
#61. When you work with great musicians, they are always a part of you ... their spirits are walking around in me, so they're still here and passing it on to others.
Miles Davis
#62. I always loved Bill's contribution to the early Yes albums. Alan later took over from him and did great things but there was something about Bill's concept of the thinking musician that we've never had since Bill left.
Chris Welch
#63. That's one of the things about being married to a couple of musicians, I have got great iPods. That's what I was left with
an iPod each.
Pamela Anderson
#64. If you're making money people don't think you're playing Jazz. When you're not making money they think you're a great Jazz musician.
Pete Fountain
#65. I think one of the great moments of my life was when I could write musician on my passport.
Jon Anderson
#66. I'm a terrible musician. While the band members are great, I'm tolerated and affectionately regarded because I do movies, but if I had to make my living as a musician I would starve. I'm like a Sunday tennis player.
Woody Allen
#67. What separates great jazz musicians from average ones is Taste. Those who have taste consistently choose notes, tempos, timbres and voicings that seduce and satisfy attentive listeners.
Marc Myers
#68. The great artist, whether he be musician, painter, or poet, is known for this absolute unexpectedness.
Loren Eiseley
#69. To be honest, I don't necessarily think you have to be an actor to act. You don't have to be a musician to make great music. If it comes along and you put your all into it, the outcome is what's important.
Andre Benjamin
#70. I'm a keen musician. Me and my mates have a great times jamming and recording stuff. We have a great band behind us and have turned my nursery-rhyme songs into quite credible pieces of music.
Tom Felton
#71. The idea of being a rock and roll musician sort of suited my talents and mentality. The freedom was great, but then I found out I wasn't free. I'd got boxed in ... The whole Beatle thing is just beyond comprehension ... subconsciously I was crying for help.
John Lennon
#72. The first impulse of a great number of civilized musicians ... is to protest ourdeclaration that the music in Hungary belongs to the Gypsies.
Franz Liszt
#73. Some musicians are not great technicians, but they give you a rich point of view.
Nathan Milstein
#74. I know a lot of great musicians that don't know they're even great, because mangers try and make them feel belittled like they're not worth a crap.
Jim "Dandy" Mangrum
#75. When talking about writing, I often use the analogy of archaeology. There are these great tunes all around. Your skill as a musician allows you to pick them out without breaking them.
Pat Metheny
#76. I always had a great appreciation for jazz, but I'm a very pedestrian musician. I get by. I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary.
Tom Waits
#77. Growing around great musicians, you just can't help it. I identified with it immediately. It was something that was so natural to me that when I started singing, it was almost like speaking.
Whitney Houston
#78. I decided I wanted to be a musician when I saw the movie 'Amadeus' around 1987. I was five years old, so it was a good time to start piano lessons after seeing Tom Hulce who played Mozart play the harpsichord on his back with his hands crossed. Such a great movie to inspire a five-year-old.
Mark Salling
#79. I'm more of an actor than a musician. I've made a little name for myself as an actor, but I also front this band. We have some great players out here, and we've found a little niche with L.A. Hootenanny.
Todd Lowe
#80. Most true musicians don't do it for the money, they do it because they love it. When I did slam poetry, it was a great way for me to express myself, I loved it.
Jake Holmes
#81. It's a great thing about being a musician; you don't stop until the day you die, you can improve. So it's a wonderful thing to do.
Marcus Miller
#82. In order for me to be successful ... In order to be a great artist - musician, actor, painter, whatever - you must be able to be private in public at all times. That is what we do.
Lady Gaga
#83. Andy Rourke and I had been playing together from 14 or 15, and we had a very great musical chemistry. Andy's just a very respected and unusual musician.
Johnny Marr
#84. From the moment I first heard Steve Laury play,
I knew he was dangerous ... He is an extremely gifted musician who makes great music! We go back 25 years and Steve will always be my dear friend.
Nathan East
#85. Any musician with a slight level of self-awareness can be taught to write a 'good' song. A great song is completely original. It feels as if the performer is the only person who could bring it to life.
Greta Salpeter
#86. I'm a great songwriter, but I'm not the most talented musician.
Noel Gallagher
#87. To me, seeing a really great comedian is a bit like watching a musician or a poet.
Dick Gregory
#88. I've always considered it a great privilege to be a musician, I've never lost sight of that.
Natalie Merchant
#89. You would never hear any song played twice in the same way. The words were retained, but within a certain frame there was great latitude, and the musician could improvise to his heart's content; and the more the variations and combinations, the greater the musician.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#90. I'm not a very creative person, you know? I'm not really an art person. I'm not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.
Tom Brady
#91. Be good to people. Be good to every single person you come into contact with. My best friends are great musicians. But more than that, they're great people.
Taylor Swift
#92. I've been collaborating with Ira Schickman on some songs, and there will be many other, great musicians involved.
Chaka Khan
#93. I'm a guitar player, really - I mean, first and foremost - I grew up with all that great 1960s music, in terms of growing up, becoming a musician, so it's like first-love stuff; I'm always going to go back to it.
Todd Rundgren
#94. I really had a great time working with 'Modest Mouse,' just because of the people. I loved writing songs with Isaac Brock, and Jeremiah Green is probably my favorite musician that I've worked with.
Johnny Marr
