Musician Quotes

I show up ready to play, so I normally try and fit the situation.

I love the way Pharell is laying down great drum tracks. He is a great drummer.

I guess by taking lessons early on, and really trying to play all the rudimentary stuff, and try to have it sound as good as my teacher. It took a lot of practice, which I enjoyed, and still do.

I always loose a little weight on the road, so I constantly have to be on top of my nutrition and hydration.

For me, I just try to make sure I eat enough and drink enough water and that's about it.

Creatively, I thought we were still viable and could do more records. But our working relationship just wasn't happening at all, and our chemistry as people broke down because of that.

But I've always liked to be the kind of drummer and musician who likes to go outside of what's expected of me, and I've always been able to do more than you necessarily hear with every band I've ever played in.

Ben was more improvisational, and relied less on methodology, and basically is a guitarist who switched to bass, whereas Jeff has a more traditional approach to playing bass in a band, and has a great sense of what his band sounds like, and we lock up nicely.

A lot of times, when a band finds success with a certain style or sound, they have a really hard time breaking away from that to grow as artists.

I think every band is a little cautious when the drummer starts to write tunes.

Live life to the fullest, and focus on the positive.

You don't think it was because a white man wrote it, a black man wrote it, a green man wrote it. What - doesn't make a difference! Doesn't make a difference. I think he did a good job.

What opera isn't violent? Two things happen, violence and love. And other than that, name something else. You can't.

We usually never got out of there before four or five o'clock in the morning. Every morning. So it was rough.

We didn't have any segregation at the Cotton Club. No. The Cotton Club was wide open, it was free.

The only credit I can give them. They synchronize wonderful. That's all. They synchronize very - you would have thought that they were actually acting, but they were synching all the time, and that's a rough job.

That's what George wrote! He wrote it. Why change it? There was this European company that I was speaking about awhile ago - course, didn't nobody know what Porgy was.

My audience was my life. What I did and how I did it, was all for my audience.

It's very difficult to photograph an opera. And they messed up on it. It just wasn't there. And I don't blame the Gershwins for taking it away. Of course, if they had gotten the original company to have done it, it would have been very good.

I think it was just an opera. Now, you go to opera, you expect to see and hear what the opera is. So, it was Catfish Row. It was singers. Marvelous voices. It didn't make no difference what color they were.

He was a silly guy. Out - do the other guy. That was his effort at all times.

Everybody that you could name would join in our audiences from, Laguardia on down. Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

Everybody did something. It was very entertaining. We had a lot of fun. Lot of fun. And there was no segregation, that I could see. I never saw any.

At times as a performer they segregated us in some of theatres.

A movie and a stage show are two entirely different things. A picture, you can do anything you want. Change it, cut out a scene, put in a scene, take a scene out. They don't do that on stage.

90%, 100% are going there to hear the singing. The story is another thing. Nobody's interested in the story. Happiness is happiness.

Bubbles was a very good dancer. Tremendous dancer. He was one of our leading dancers of the country at that time. And, of course, he didn't have much of a voice.

On stage, I am in the dark.

Love is so much better when you're not married.

If I have stepped on some people at times because I am at the top, it couldn't be helped. What should I do if someone gets hurt... retire?