Top 100 Quotes About Playing Music
#1. It's unfashionable to admit, but playing music makes us happy and makes us smile.
Chris Hesse
#2. When I started playing music, people weren't selling 5 million records. That was not the standard; that was not the focus.
Prince
#3. I'm definitely an athlete who has a hobby playing music. I've been doing baseball since I was 5 or 6. It's the only thing I've ever thought of really my whole life, and music came into my life actually in '99, playing and singing. It's definitely been the only hobby I've had that I can't put down.
Bronson Arroyo
#4. People used to make records, as in the record of an event, the event of people playing music in a room, and now everything's cross-marketing, its about sunglasses and shoes, or guns and drugs that you choose.
Ani DiFranco
#5. I saw this DJ playing music and saying things to the kids. They would answer him back, and I say, 'That's a great idea.'
Sylvia Robinson
#6. I find a therapy in playing music, in many different ways.
Dave Matthews
#7. Mom did not want me to have anything to do with playing music. Being from a middle-class Black family in that particular era, everybody wanted you to have a profession
a doctor, a lawyer, and so forth. So she sent me to school to study medicine.
Don Alias
#8. The only job I'd ever had that might be considered not playing music was teaching guitar, which I did in college for a while, but that still falls in the same category.
John Oates
#9. I'm sure we'll be Tweetin' up the Twitosphere as we travel around the world playing music.
Brandon Boyd
#10. We started playing music from an early age and so we wasn't really aware of that side of it, the weird thing is the more successful you get the more free booze and drugs you get, they should be given to the bands who don't have the money.
Ville Valo
#11. I have a couple of things I do to clear my head when I need it. The first is exercise, the kind of exercise that makes me lie on the floor afterward gasping for breath and wonder if I'm actually going to be able to breathe enough to not die. The other one is playing music.
Stewart Butterfield
#12. I call it 'new forms'. When you're starting out, they ask you to do four or five minute sets, but once you're a headliner, you do like 90 minutes. I try to think of different things to divvy up the show, like doing drawings, playing music ... I gotta carry the show, that's the problem.
Demetri Martin
#13. I've been playing music all my life, from being a choir soloist at Symphony Hall as a youngster to playing in bands through high school and college at Kent State. Went in the service at 17, out before I was 21.
Arthur Godfrey
#14. I've always loved writing. Doing that at the same time as playing music can be tiring.
Carrie Brownstein
#15. The most important thing is to find people that you enjoy - friends that you enjoy playing music with.
Michael Glawogger
#16. As I was sitting there, the deejay was playing music and talking over the music, and the kids were going crazy. All of a sudden, something said to me, 'Put something like that on a record, and it will be the biggest thing.' I didn't even know you called it rap.
Sylvia Robinson
#18. I want less and less control with music. Just playing music without any idea of composition or writing.
Yann Tiersen
#19. I wouldn't do anything else [besides acting], for sure. If I did, it would be music or some other pursuit in this same area. I have been acting and playing music since childhood. It's what I enjoyed most.
Dermot Mulroney
#20. I have realised how exciting and easy it is to be a time traveller by looking at paintings and films and architecture and playing music or listening to it. I don't think you necessarily have to live in the present all the time.
Jools Holland
#21. It's hard to say when the life of a band starts and stops ... but playing music together is an act of trust. When that's broken, it's impossible to continue.
Kim Gordon
#22. You know, I like playing music and playing guitar, and I like to draw, so I thought I would end up just probably barely making a living, or probably having to have some other job, but being involved in one of those things that I really like to do. But that didn't work out like that.
John Corbett
#23. I always liked playing music and I always wanted to be good at playing guitar. I always saw myself as an old man living in the mountains playing a guitar, but I didn't really turn that into a desire to be a professional musician or a singer or a rock star or anything like that.
Brett Dennen
#24. Getting out on stage and playing music for people feels great when people are cheering for you, that's obviously really exciting. But what's most exciting is the idea that we're all experiencing something that's bigger than us.
Dan Mangan
#25. I mean it's funny, playing music, how of course you want it to do well, you want them to like it, but it's not competitive like an election, it's the Olympics, it's not a Formula 1 race. The Billboard charts are just to show you what people like.
Eddie Van Halen
#26. Those moments of play that we do get in meta-life, like playing music, or golf, or word-play, or flirting - those are some of the best parts about being alive.
Stewart Butterfield
#27. But in my family, playing music was still more important than the type of music you played, so when after a few months it became clear that my love for the cello was no passing crush, my parents rented me one so I could practice at home. Rusty scales and triads
Gayle Forman
#28. When I first started playing music in 1955, there was just a small body of people that knew it. It was a very esoteric type of thing.
Steve Lacy
#29. I never really made much money playing music. It's because I've never really worked with a producer who could make my music sound, I guess, like how the public wants it to sound.
Mark Linkous
#30. Practice and playing music has to be like a religious experience. It has to be your religion, you know; it has to be your trance. You get something from a devotion to it and digging deeper into yourself and the nature of reality.
Jonathan Harnum
#31. Playing music is a lifetime's work. And if you want to carry on with it, you have to try to better yourself. You have to see where the music can take you.
Paul Weller
#32. If somebody would come and they're not playing music, they would encounter certain people on another level.
Billy Higgins
#33. I started playing music when I was 12 years old.
Chris Jericho
#34. It's real primal; I just like playing music.
Ronnie Dunn
#35. I just want to keep playing music and keep recording. I feel like my best days are ahead.
Ricky Skaggs
#36. The more I go on in this career of making albums, writing songs and playing music, the more I think of each album as a movie. I really wanted to make a film, but making a film is much more expensive than making a record.
J. D. Souther
#37. In New York, I'm around a lot of the reasons I started playing music in the first place. I live right behind Matt Umanov Guitars. I live on the street that Suze Rotolo and Bob Dylan were walking down on the album cover. I recognize the history.
Steve Earle
#38. The thing is, my education was music. I knew I'd be playing music no matter what. That's all I thought about, I was obsessed with it. I'm still obsessed with it. It gets the best of me sometimes.
Billie Joe Armstrong
#39. I want to be playing music, and I want to be a great mom, and I want to do everything.
Emily Robison
#40. I started playing music when I was around 10. I always wanted to be in a band, so I started out by playing drums.
Drake Bell
#41. Find something you really love doing and mix it with something you really care about. That's why I've had such longevity as an artist. I really, really care about ending violence against women, and I really, really love playing music. It's super enjoyable!
Kathleen Hanna
#42. Zack leaned over to whisper in her ear. "It's true, Mollie," he said. "Everything that man said is true. Tomorrow we begin rebuilding. Playing music. Dancing. I promise you.
Elizabeth Camden
#43. I've been playing music most of my life.
Adam Duritz
#44. I didn't plan on rock-n-roll. I wanted to learn jazz; I got to know some people doing rock-n-roll with jazz, and I thought I could make some money playing music.
Robby Krieger
#45. There's something in me that loves to inspire people: when I'm playing music, I imagine all this sparkly stardust going through everyone. I want to make people come alive.
Bat For Lashes
#46. 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
#47. I've worked since I was 11 years old, playing music and following the dream, and shaking and moving and doing it. And then, you have cancer and it was like 'Ooooohh.' It was like a big eraser. It was the only thing in my life that had ever made me just stop.
Melissa Etheridge
#48. I don't think it's important who I am. I really like playing music, but I don't really want to be anything in particular.
Elliott Smith
#50. I hadn't seen that many movies that really go deep enough into the fears of playing music or the language that musicians can use to treat each other or, like, the way that you can see it dehumanize and the way that it can feel like boot camp.
Damien Chazelle
#51. I had seen a lot of music movies that celebrated music or that showed the kind of joys from playing music, which is a big part of it of course, and not something that I would want to deny.
Damien Chazelle
#52. I'm probably never happier than when I'm by myself in the water. What I've worked and sacrificed for is not to be on stage playing music but to surf in some secluded place. It's a grounding element. Waves don't care who you are.
Eddie Vedder
#53. I've been playing music for over 20 years now. I started playing when I was 14 years old. To everyone who has said I was an overnight success ... where have you been the last 20 years?
Randy Houser
#54. People like Art Blakey and Buddy Rich, you look at them playing music, and it's just like looking at a heavy metal drummer. I mean, they're playing with the same amount of ferocity. It's not to say all jazz is like that.
Damien Chazelle
#55. If you read reviews of concerts, the word 'creative' comes up all the time. However, performers playing music usually aren't creative. Critics might say they are, but they're just playing another persons work. They didn't create it.
Ned Rorem
#56. Playing music to me is as close to having super powers as you can have.
John Mayer
#57. The first thing I think about is music, and the last thing I think about is music. I'm like some Monk. I don't see a lot of daylight. I hang out with musicians, I hang out with directors and I just try to spend as much of my life as possible playing music.
Hans Zimmer
#58. When I was 17 or 18 and it was time to figure out what to do with my life, I realized that I didn't enjoy anything as much as I enjoyed playing music. I felt that I had no choice: that I had to become a musician.
David Sanborn
#59. I'm actually a pretty upbeat person outside of playing music.
Ryan Adams
#60. The way I work on music is that I go into my studio, and I start playing music, and I see what happens, and ... I never think about it.
Moby
#61. I just start playing music and eventually I sing something, a line of a verse or a B section or a line of a chorus, and the line that I end up singing is related to the music I'm playing, if that makes any sense. And I go from there.
Bob Seger
#62. When you play competitive tennis you are competing against someone else and you have to win. Playing music I didn't have to win I had to become better within myself.
Aaron Zigman
#63. For me, playing music while I write is important. Several of the romantic scenes in 'Paris' were written with Debussy's 'String Quartet,' his 'L'Apres-midi d'une Faune,' or Canteloube's 'Songs of the Auvergne' playing in the background.
Edward Rutherfurd
#64. I was never very good at picking cotton, and then I only made fifty cents or $1 a day. People would work for $1 a day during the Depression. So we would get $2 for playing music and just having fun. I think that as a result of that it was not just the money, but we enjoyed doing it.
Johnny Gimble
#65. Playing music in the wake of the Blink thing was like finding love in the middle of a war zone.
Tom DeLonge
#66. I like to think that if it hadn't gone as well as it has, if I wasn't able to make a living off of playing music, I would still be playing the music. But, of course, I wouldn't likely have had the opportunity to travel, and a lot of the places have inspired songs.
Bruce Cockburn
#67. I like playing music. I don't always like the feeling of people looking at me. I don't think I'm, like, a natural performer, but I'm getting better.
Dan Bejar
#68. From a self-conscious standpoint, it's hard to see myself on a screen in a way that isn't just me playing music or doing something silly.
Carrie Brownstein
#69. You've got Corey Feldman doing his thing, and the problem is, they're trying to be pop stars. You can't compare Salty to any of the other actors out there playing music.
Dustin Diamond
#70. Playing music is not really susceptible to theory much. Circumstances affect it so much.
Derek Bailey
#71. When I was playing with synth players, I was still within a conceptual framework of playing music. When I started playing solo, I became much more aware of the acoustic phenomena that the instruments were producing.
Z'EV
#72. You've got certain guys that just want to be famous and then you've got the real musicians that just love playing music.
Zakk Wylde
#73. I didn't imagine getting to 50, let alone still be playing music. When I was 18, I thought it'd all be over by the time I was 21.
Paul Weller
#74. I've been surfing almost as long as I've been playing music.
Jackson Guthy
#75. There is a lot of work just in terms of traveling and logistics and people and gear and all that kind of stuff. But I never really have problems playing music. That never seems like work.
James Iha
#76. I know that I can sing. That's the reason I started playing music when I was twelve years old.
Kesha
#77. Basically, radio hasn't changed over the years. Despite all the technical improvements, it still boils down to a man or a woman and a microphone, playing music, sharing stories, talking about issues - communicating with an audience.
Casey Kasem
#78. Going out and playing music - that's what I do. I don't do much else.
Dave Grohl
#79. The way I started playing music was sitting around with friends and singing songs. I love good ol' fashioned guitar pulls.
Rodney Atkins
#80. I rebelled against the Mormon Church by going to other churches. I rebelled against my parents by not eating meat. I rebelled against my friends and myself by doing drugs. And I rebelled against everything that was holding me down by playing music with these guys.
Bert McCracken
#81. When I get a script and do my work, and then show up on set and work, it's the same zone that I'm in when I'm in front of a canvas, or when I'm writing a story about one of my paintings, or when I'm playing music. Whatever I'm doing at any given time, it's the same exact zone.
Michael Marisi Ornstein
#82. I really love playing music with other people. It's more fun to be on the road with others. It's kind of lonely out there when you play on your own!
Tracy Chapman
#83. I don't really have an ambition to become the Rolling Stones, or anything like that. For me, it's just playing music is kind of a transcendent, amazing gift, so when people come together and they play, I think it's a real special thing.
Jonathan Jackson
#84. Playing music for as long as I had been playing music and then getting a shot at making a record and at having an audience and stuff, it's just like an untamed force ... a different kind of energy.
Eddie Vedder
#85. I'm just happy and proud to be playing music every day. Recognition is really cool, but it can also be kind of scary.
Justin Vernon
#86. Many, many years ago, I was one of the few conductors who talked to the audience and now a lot of classical conductors have figured it out ... otherwise, you just get the back of someone's head playing music you could hear on a CD. It's not enough anymore.
Marvin Hamlisch
#87. I'm actually not an exhibitionist at all. When you get onstage and you get under the lights playing music, I feel more hidden and more alone than anywhere else. You hide behind your music and let your emotions come out through the music.
Tim McGraw
#88. As I'm getting older a lot of my friends I used to go out and party with, they're all dead. The fact that I've been through that, I'm not proud of the fact that I've been through all that, but it's part of my journey. I'm lucky to be alive. I'm lucky to be playing music.
Ozzy Osbourne
#89. We're like old people now playing music. I'm so glad we stuck it out because it's a lot better. I used to feel kind of anxious. Now our apprenticeship is over.
Thurston Moore
#90. When I tour I'm going to countries to play music for people. My presence in a country is not an endorsement or a condemnation of that country's policies. My presence in a country is an effort to connect with people through playing music.
Moby
#91. I was 35 years old and not in the best of shape. I spent many late nights playing music, drinking beer, and eating Taco Bell.
Bryan Hayes
#92. I see a lot of parents now who are really supporting their kids playing music.
Jonny Lang
#93. If I was in a zombie apocalypse, I wouldn't be playing music, because that would attract zombies.
Scott Weiland
#94. There's no drug in the world that can compare with playing music.
Pete Doherty
#95. Most of the time, not all of the time, but most of time, when I'm singing and playing music, I feel in my heart, that the ego issues of the heart and mind aren't there, or maybe they're there, but they're not bugging. Before and after they are.
Jai Uttal
#96. I love playing music as much as if not more so than I did when I was 19; that compared to most of my peers is pretty surprising. I wake up every day and get really excited about doing stuff that I have been doing for the last 30 years. I just love it.
Slash
#97. I just like playing music and doing it with people that I care about. It doesn't really matter where. It's like, 'Why don't we just play piano in a small bar? Why do we want to make an arena full of people happy?'
Josh Klinghoffer
#98. Playing music was always a part of my life; I don't know anything else.
Mark Salling
#99. I've been playing music since I was 12. I love performing live.
Jonathan Jackson
#100. It's all about the music. For me, that's truly what I live for. Just music constantly. Always listening to, writing, or playing music. That's definitely me.
Tommy Lee
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