Jimmy Chamberlin Quotes

Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you.

My studio's always in my house. I want to wake up and be like, 'You know I'm gonna make music today in my underwear. You know what, I'm gonna be in my pajamas. You know what, I'm actually just gonna stay inside for the next three days so I can make music.'

I think the most important thing about music is the sense of escape.

When we make records, it's hard to pinpoint one thing that inspires a record. It's usually a number of different things that lead to inspiration or wanting to write something down and share it with someone.

Anyone who writes knows that ultimately the majority of your time is spent alone in a room with a piano or a guitar, no matter what the project is.

Some of the best songs I've written, I've written in 10 minutes.

Music was never just a hobby for me. I'd pick up a guitar every day to work on whatever I was writing at the time. I would put my ideas in songs the way some people might put them in diaries or journals.

I just do what I'm here for and that's to make that music.

I only live in my music, and I have scarcely begun one thing when I start on another. As I am now working, I am often engaged on three or four things at the same time.

I started writing out all of my feelings, and people asked me, 'Have you ever thought of recording your music?' It was something I'd always thought of, but I'd never really had the confidence.

I'm not sitting around, waiting for something to run across the Internet so I can go, 'Oh, that's what I'mma write about.' I just go around, live life, make music, and it's epic.

We've always tried to inspire ourselves, so to speak. In the beginning, that could mean just hearing your own songs played back to you for the very first time.

I'm never not in the studio creating; it's like my second home.

I have, like, 'Finders Keepers' fever now! Sometimes I go in the studio, and I'm like, 'That worked so well, and I wrote it in 45 minutes, so if I try wearing the same outfit and playing on the same piano, it'll happen again.'

I don't need music to write, but sometimes I put music on. I don't need special clothes or even my own equipment.

I let the song come to me. Then that thing comes to you, and you just know what that thing is. Music isn't like a 9-to-5 job. You never know. It's just the most unpredictable thing.

Being a songwriter is really the base of being an artist, for me.

I get so many ideas for songs, but I'm so seldom disciplined enough to sit down and crank them out.

To me, it's like the difference between a pen and a paintbrush. Music draws from almost the identical place as art does, which really is that intangible - it's like you're pulling from the ether. I don't know where it comes from. Nobody really does. It sort of arrives when it wants to.

Songwriting is too mysterious and uncontrolled a process for me to direct it towards any one thing.

Sometimes when you're trying to do a record too close to home, you can get really distracted.

I'm the guy that gets up at three in the morning to jot down an entire sheet of lyrics for something that won't be recorded for six months. You have to get it down when you can, because thoughts are fluid.

Songwriting is a very mysterious process. It feels like creating something from nothing. It's something I don't feel like I really control.

Music is not a work for me - it's a form of meditation, and you don't need to work hard for it.

Songwriting's never been a natural art for me; it's always been a bit of a struggle.