Top 100 Quotes About Being A Musician
#1. I don't spend a lot of time thinking of what they'll do musically, I try to imagine being locked into a windowless room with this person for twelve hours at a time. If you can look at that and think it might be fun then maybe you've got the right musician.
Leo Kottke
#2. I can feel my father's spirit within me. I can feel similarities within us from the artistic perspective from being a musician. We have a lot of similarities.
Ziggy Marley
#3. Clarence once mentioned to me during a negotiation but he should be paid not only for playing but for being Clarence.
Bruce Springsteen
#4. The age of 18 seemed the right time to try something different in my life. Moving to the U.K. was a risk, and I was never confident that I could ever make a full-time living being a musician, but I had to try. Initially, I worked as a jazz musician in pubs or with bands.
Manfred Mann
#5. Being an artist and a musician, I have witnessed the previous generation taking the art form, not as a way of making a living, but as a belief, an almost maniacal, sometimes insane devotion and commitment to communication.
David Finckel
#6. I consider my job [being a musician] is to have a little idea and nurture it and put it in some form that everybody else can understand and then sort of pass it on. It's really a passing through. In other words, you receive and you transmit.
Keith Richards
#7. I think some of the musicians are more like punk rock musicians. It's like an art as opposed to being a musician. It's definitely more radical psychedelic bands, more than anything.
Wayne Coyne
#8. Any saxophone player will have those influences come through in their music in a very different way. I can listen to the same 10 sax players as someone else for my entire life, and we'll both play completely differently. That's the beauty of being a musician.
Kenny G
#9. If you're going to be a musician's girlfriend, you have to know that your man will always love his bandmates in a way you can't even touch, because they are the guys who help him create music. You can only help him create a living human being, with your dumb uterus.
Julie Klausner
#10. Being a musician, people ask you a lot about what musicians inspire you, and there's plenty of musicians that I love and respect, but I think that I'm the most inspired by cinema.
Halsey
#11. Being a musician makes you very - musicians in general tend to be quite sensitive, I think, to the environment around them, which helps when you are trying to interact with others on screen, to be aware, to be sensitive, and to try to understand what's going on in the scene.
Shirley Manson
#12. I know my own weaknesses as a human being, and as a musician, as a singer and as a woman.
Amy Grant
#13. I don't think in time signatures, and when I do, what I write is generally 3/4 or 4/4, the most basic, straightforward stuff. I think that comes from just not being a super-schooled musician.
Blake Judd
#14. I grew up in a time when being a musician and learning to be a musician was actually very wonderful.
Bobby McFerrin
#15. When you commit to being a musician, I don't think you're really sure or care about when you're going to pay the bills. I don't think you care about that as much as you care about playing music.
Adam Levine
#16. Being a musician is what I do, but it's not what I am.
Herbie Hancock
#17. 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
#18. Growing up listening to rap music, you almost feel like you should have haters. That's an important part of being a successful musician. It's a good thing, I guess.
Ezra Koenig
#19. Being a musician - and I like to think of myself as a musician with a capital M - you need to be an omnivore, and I think the best musicians will listen to anything and love everything, and I do.
Jason Robert Brown
#20. You can expect nothing in being a musician, and you have to be just very thankful every time it goes positively for you.
Halsey
#21. I started getting into Internet technologies and computers. I wasn't especially interested in being a musician, but I wound up finding my way back to being interested in music through computers.
Eric Avery
#22. I'm not trying to stay away from being a celebrity, I'm not saying, 'I'm sooo not famous,' I'm trying to continue being a musician in a time when everyone is very celebrity-led.
Amy Winehouse
#23. I wouldn't recommend being a musician to anyone. It's not glamorous. It's a lot of being dirty, not eating, playing for five people and one of them is the bartender.
Dan Reynolds
#24. I hate fame. There's this assumption that everyone wants it - that by being a musician, I've signed up for it at some point. But personally, what I signed up for is sharing my music. I've always said I'd rather have four No. 10 songs than one No. 1 hit.
Chet Faker
#25. When I discovered music - when I discovered the craft of shaping a song - my being fell into place.
Charlotte Eriksson
#26. I never looked at being a musician any different than waking up one day and wanting to be an accountant or a lawyer.
James Vincent McMorrow
#27. I'd always meant to become a musician. I'd just never gotten around to it. And my daughter being born, I was like, Okay, this is seriously the last chance. And also: Do you really want to be a dad who never did what he wanted to do? You've got to set an example now. You've got to do this.
Jonathan Coulton
#28. 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
#29. Cause I'm a musician, I'm not really good at posing and being a model, like, modeling.
Amy Winehouse
#30. My whole purpose of being a musician is to not follow the rules, so if I set rules for myself, I've already failed.
Lotic
#31. I think a valid approach to being a musician is to take all of the experience of your life and filter it through your personality and send it back out there, and that's what art is.
David Sanborn
#32. Being a musician since I was a teen, Guitar Center is the staple. You need anything to create, it's there. You need a Guitar Center. You gotta give it homage. It's a tool shed, and without the tool shed, it's hard to create.
Steve Aoki
#33. To be a musician, you have to be honest ... to be honest ... to be honest.
Bobby McFerrin
#34. I can feel the love I'm a part of surrounding me and flowing through me; I'm near home and I'm standing hand in hand with those I love, past and present, in the sun, on the outskirts of something that feels almost like... being free.
Bruce Springsteen
#35. I wish I could write librettos for the rest of my life. It is the purest of human pleasures, a heavenly hermaphroditism of being both writer and musician. No wonder that selfish beast Wagner kept it all to himself.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#36. Playing drums or music, being a musician, is inside of you. So you would always see me tapping on something, playing on tables ... I never felt the need to pull out drums.
Eric Hernandez
#37. I'm not a jazz artist. Don't get me wrong now, it's all music to me. I just played music and if it's likeable, someone liked the sound, then fine, but I'm not interested in being a jazz musician. I don't consider myself a jazz musician. I don't have anything to do with that word.
Pharoah Sanders
#38. I want to live in a world where Miley (or any female musician) can twerk wildly at 20, wear a full-cover floral hippie mumu at 37, show up at 47 in see-through latex, and pose semi-naked, like Keith & co, on the cover of Rolling Stone at 57 and be APPLAUDED for being so comfortable with her body.
Amanda Palmer
#39. But if you want to be a songwriter-based musician, whether you play punk or rock or country or jazz, whatever, you have to work on your songwriting and you have to work on being able to play in front of people, I think. That performance is how you create the groundwork for a lasting career.
Amy Ray
#41. I've sort of had an investigatory relationship with being a musician. I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I felt I had had my run - I had done Jane's and I wasn't particularly interested in music anymore.
Eric Avery
#42. Everything that I do is limitation and complete intuition. I'm a human being. I'm not a musician. I'm not an entertainer. I don't know anything!
Willis Earl Beal
#43. Kenny G is extremely talented and resourceful and a powerful force to be reckoned with ... Mr. G might not seem evil, but I fear him more than any other human being.
Matthew Quick
#44. 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
#45. I made a conscious decision that I was not going to have children. I didn't want others raising them, and looking after them myself would get in the way of being a musician and writer.
Stevie Nicks
#46. Being as versatile as I am, I take offense to the notion that no serious musician would not be doing a late night talk show gig. One has to be open enough in other areas to be able to contribute to a show like this.
Kevin Eubanks
#47. I want longevity; I love music, being a musician is the greatest gift in the world to me, and if I were to get signed to a label, my family and team around me are always gonna be there to make sure they want the very best for me. My fans are what it's all about ...
Christina Grimmie
#48. I feel like a part of my role being a musician and part of why I want to be a musician is to show women an alternative to sort of the cultural norms, the stereotypes of what we're supposed to be, demure and quiet and motherly.
Janet Weiss
#49. I've been so used to being supported by musicians, and I don't class myself as a particularly adept musician on instruments. I think I'm a songwriter.
PJ Harvey
#50. Naw, I wasn't going to sell my principles for them. I wanted to be accepted as a good musician and that didn't call for no grinning, but just being able to play the horn good. And that's what I did then and now. Critics can take that or leave it.
Miles Davis
#51. I was never planning on being a musician. It's basically a hobby that sprawled out of control.
DJ Spooky
#52. Being a musician enables a person to bend the notes and express things that are inside you, no matter what.
Neil Young
#53. I love being a musician. I love the lifestyle. But I think it's probably as difficult and frustrating as anything.
Trevor Dunn
#54. I enjoy doing different kinds of things. I just enjoy being not tied too much. I feel that I'm tied to myself as a kind of traditional musician and a singer, and the history that I have ties me down.
Mick Jagger
#55. Being a musician - it's easier for me to date an athlete. There's too much competition [with a musician]. There's too much know-it-all pop star.
Jessica Simpson
#56. I could never overstate the importance of a musician's need to develop his or her ear. Actually, I believe that developing a good 'inner ear' - the art of being able to decipher musical components solely through listening - is the most important element in becoming a good musician.
Steve Vai
#57. I'm better at producing than I am at being a songwriter, but it doesn't change the fact that I still have a desire to play and write songs. I've never wanted to be a career musician. But I still love to play and write. It's a big part of who I am.
John Congleton
#58. 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
#59. We are concerned, not with the development of just one capacity, such as that of a mathematician, or a scientist, or a musician, but with the total development of the student as a human
being.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#60. A part of being a female musician is kind of getting past your looks and just honing in on the music.
Weyes Blood
#61. I'd actually say that every musician is a human being, and that not everybody likes being social. But with music, there are all these ingredients to the business that have nothing to do with writing songs or playing an instrument.
Amanda Palmer
#62. 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
#63. Being a musician doesn't take away your right as a citizen to speak your mind.
Emily Robison
#64. You can' t help being a musician because you've grown up with music, yet being one means being compared to your dad and being slated for it. But I really don't have the ambitions of most people going into the industry.
Dhani Harrison
#65. Maybe I was being naive. Even stupid. I mean, who would trade Standford for being homeless? [ ... ] But I had to know if I was meant to be a musician. Otherwise I'd spend the rest of my life regretting it. Asking myself ... what if?
Tara Kelly
#66. I never dreamt of being a musician for my livelihood. I certainly never would have wanted to be in the business that I'm in, meaning the fame and the glory, the glitter, the rock star, the famous part.
Eddie Van Halen
#67. I never minded being thought of as a pop star. People have always thought I wanted to be seen as a serious musician, but I didn't, I just wanted people to know that I was absolutely serious about pop music.
George Michael
#68. I like acting and being a musician. It's like comparing apples and oranges. But I really like my day job. I've always played music since I was 12, and I guess I always will.
Dennis Quaid
#69. There's more to being a musician than just making music.
Burning Spear
#70. Anybody who'd expend energy preventing people from hearing music seems not to understand the basic principal of making music in the first place. It's so antithetical to being a musician.
Jeff Tweedy
#71. I am a writer - that is what I am before being a performer or musician. I love waking up in the morning and then going to sleep that night with something that did not exist.
Brian McKnight
#72. I feel like what I'm best at is being a musician and a performer. I want to use that to help people who are good at starting nonprofits.
Kathleen Hanna
#73. Being a musician, you want to be able to do the hardest stuff there is. People would think it's classical, but in classical, it's all on the page and the difficulty is keeping up with the music.
Brian McKnight
#74. There's zero correlation between owning music and being a greater music lover or musician than the next person.
Erol Alkan
#75. I don't know what makes a writer's voice. It's dozens of things. There are people who write who don't have it. They're tone-deaf, even though they're very fluent. It's an ability, like anything else, being a doctor or a veterinarian, or a musician.
Paula Fox
#76. Being a musician is very easy. My house is full of musical instruments. There's a lot of music, always.
Bjork
#77. If being a gangster were a prerequisite to being a musician, there'd be a lot less cello music, for example.
Greg Giraldo
#78. I get to focus on being a musician sometimes, and I get to focus on being a vocalist sometimes.
Britt Daniel
#79. Your development as a musician will come to an eventual standtill if you do not develop yourself as a human being. Only by having a creative, expansive and inspiring life can you create creative, expansive and inspiring music.
Carl Orr
#80. I am very self-critical, but that's a good thing because it keeps me growing as a human being and as a musician.
Ray Lamontagne
#81. What I like about being a musician is that I find the thing soothing, but I also give the soothing to other people;
Sinead O'Connor
#82. Being a musician is a noble profession.
Paul Weller
#83. I won't complain about touring, because I really do believe that a public-figure musician complaining about being a public-figure musician is just absurd. Like, 'Boo hoo hoo! I have to stand on stage and people pay attention to me!'
Moby
#84. I love being a drummer but I love being a musician in general and I love the Foo fighters.
Dave Grohl
#85. I had to deal with being somewhat of an outcast because it's not socially acceptable to be a struggling musician. There have been times where I've felt sorry for the person I was dating. I felt she deserved better.
Taylor Hicks
#86. Being a musician is to live, not to survive. Surviving is going to work every day and giving up your liberty and your time. When you do music, it's a free life.
Richard Pinhas
#87. Because I have sixty years of being a professional composer, conductor, musician, whatever, and you develop a lot of friendships and you get involved with a lot of sort of long-term commitments and obligations.
Gunther Schuller
#88. I am not fundamentally a musician, I am fundamentally a human being.
Herbie Hancock
#89. 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
#90. I'm so into music that I just stop and listen, whenever there's music on. That's the problem with being a musician for so long. I can get lost in the bassline, fascinated with the arrangement, curious about the production. I can't shut it out.
Derek Sivers
#91. Being a professional musician doesn't mean you spend 12 hours a day playing music. It means you spend up to 12 hours a day taking care of business, dealing with litigation, with the various characters who've stolen your interests, or fending off hostile lawsuits from former members of the band.
Robert Fripp
#92. Of course, I would be depressed sometimes, and my Mom would be worried about me because I would just sleep to escape. Cause I was so scared of being a musician or artist, or whatever you want to call it.
Chantal Kreviazuk
#93. Those who have expressed doubts and misgivings about their ability to live this kind of life shouldn't try, because being a musician is not something you chose to be, it is something you are.
Billy Joel
#94. My gift's primarily literary. That being said, I ended up a musician. By the time I made the bluegrass record ... I'm more impressed with myself when I push the envelope musically than I am when I push it literality.
Steve Earle
#95. One of the reasons my father ... became a dentist was so he could always be home for dinner and spend weekends with his family. At one point he had thought about being a musician, but he said, I'm not going to do that because I'd be on the road all the time and I wouldn't be with my family.
Dean Ornish
#96. I went to university (Brown), I worked as a designer, I competed in Olympic sport (rowing) ... and I ended up being a musician. It's in the DNA, I guess.
Dhani Harrison
#97. I consider that success for anything, whether it's being a musician or a writer. As long as you can support yourself, you're successful. People need to change their idea of what success is.
Joan Jett
#98. Touring is my favorite part of being a musician. All the places I've traveled and lived affect me in many different ways. Good and bad.
Elle King
#99. I have no illusions about being a genius musician. I pride myself on being a soldier, a warrior for jazz. I trained a lot of young people, and I've learned my lessons well. I'd like to keep the flame burning.
Phil Woods
#100. Growing up, I fantasized about being a rock musician and that somehow it would be really easy. I didn't realize that it's so much work.
Sean Lennon
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