Levon Helm Quotes

I create little challenges for myself, like, 'Okay, whatever you do in this song, you've got to somehow work in Greek Cypriots,' or something like that.

It's amazing to me to see how bands evolve and how they take all their influences and come up with their own sound.

I think that one of the things that influences me most as a composer is to what extent I can deconstruct and reconstruct the material that I'm working with.

I tried to take heavy metal... and balled it up and chopped it in half and really tried to create a new form of energy. I really tried to re-shape extreme music as I see it through my eyes.

In a way, I pattern myself after all the bands I used to like as a kid. Every time they put out LPs, they had a whole new look and a new sound.

In my last band, Soundgarden, I had a couple of different drummers sit in on some stuff and it was fun for me to kind of take a break and watch the band.

Once we're inside a tune, we can do anything with it.

A lot of songs are derivative of each other. Sometimes you need to take a departure from what you do to something that's slightly different in order to get inspiration.

I love hearing the same songs over and over again - as long as queens challenge themselves to come up with new ways of performing them.

I will stop nasal singing. I will change if the time comes. I am 100% sure about it. The day I feel people are loving some different kind of music, I will opt for it and change myself.

Every album is unto itself, so whatever sounds we need to come up with, like way back when, we needed horns. So we invented the Lone Wolf Horns, and we learned how to play horns.

I'm a chameleon. When you put me in certain soils, musically speaking, I will be in that place.

I love rearranging and reimagining tunes, so I want my audience to enjoy hearing songs in a new way and make their own discoveries.

I was always playing with whatever I could get under my hands, making rhythm with it, which was natural for me, because my parents were listening to a lot of African music.

I just want to be a part of a band that will be able to reinvent themselves, you know.

I was playing surf music with my band when a girlfriend of mine who had come from Los Angeles took me to a James Brown concert. That show really changed my whole outlook and thought processes, especially about music and different cultures.

I like to tinkle at my piano when I'm working out a new song - I just put my fingers down and see what comes out.

I feel like Europe is way more advanced. They're way more open to the definition of jazz. More cool. They're like, 'You want to do that? Awesome. You want to work with a rapper? Awesome.' They're not, 'Aah, it's not real jazz.'

I'm always trying to evolve my sound. I love the simplicity of my setup. I play Gibson guitars and Marshall amps. So it's kind of like the standard rock sound.

For one, the whole concept of 'Live From Here' - writing a song every week - was like composition bootcamp.

We would work up a tune that would make me learn a drum pattern I hadn't played before. In the early stages, the pattern wouldn't just fall into place, and I would start thinking about it. And the more I thought about it, the worse it would get.

If you look at these bands like The Beatles, they did something that was new for that time, whether it was shocking or just a new direction that they were going.

I get bored of music really easily, so I always try and make music that makes sense, but then it's just a little bit wrong.

I think I have the capability to make music different from what I have already released. There are ghazals and other songs that I can create. There is no stopping me though.

I'm going to keep evolving and evolving and showing people that progression is key when it comes to music.