Mika Quotes

When you do something in music and see it happen again in the next generation, you know you're on the right wave length.

I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind.

I've gotta stick to my roots, and my roots are blues.

I'm in hotel rooms night after night, playing a lot of the same venues as my dad and carrying the guitar that used to be his. We're the same person. I don't know if he realises how much of a legacy he has left to his children.

My father's songs don't intimidate me; my father's songs are my songs. My songs are his songs. There's no intimidation.

The name Van Halen, the family legacy, is going to go on long after I'm gone.

The thing about influence is that any composer worth anything will give you the same names.

In some articles written about me, writers have said I'm a link between the old and the new, and I think, in a certain sense, that's legitimate.

The blues is like a planet. It's an enormous topic. You can't ignore the impact that it has had and continues to have on the whole musical culture. It's a tree that everyone is swinging from. Without it, I don't know where I would be. It's indelible and indispensable.

I'm not trying to emulate or imitate. But I do believe that I embody that spirit from Robert Johnson on up.

We don't need another Woody. Even Bob Dylan knew he couldn't be Woody Guthrie... I like Woody Guthrie fine, but I don't need the 50th generation version of it.

Without the blues, modern music would be nothing like it is now - not remotely.

I do feel I'm responsible to carrying on the music. That's what I was charged with as a kid. When I was a little girl, I was told, 'When we are gone' - when you're a kid, you never think they'll ever be gone - 'you have to keep the music alive, the Carter Family songs, and add your own songs.'

I did not want to go onstage and play Led Zeppelin songs; there has to be more than that. I wanted to create a complete experience of what Led Zeppelin means to me, growing up around them and being part of it all my life.

When I'm dead, gone or whatever, people will always remember my name and the music I did during my time.

I feel like the Roses were a great group, but I never wanted to try to do it again. I knew I couldn't get a band that would compare to the Roses, that would have an impact like the Roses.

I have a history, and I am proud of my legacy as a songwriter, all of the songs that I've brought forth into our culture. I'm proud of that.

You have to understand, that's all I've ever wanted: for London to have a credible musical voice. I will honestly, honestly die happy knowing that I saw it happen.

I feel like I have to create the Keith Whitley sound. That doesn't mean I can't borrow from the people I grew up listening to, but it doesn't serve any purpose to sing the same kind of songs they sang. When you do that, it's going to come out sounding like an imitation, whether it's meant to or not.

I wouldn't be who I am if my parents hadn't been musicians.

If a man, in a lifetime of 50 years, can point to six songs that are immediately identifiable, he has achieved something. Irving Berlin can sing 60 that are immediately identifiable. Somebody once said you couldn't have a holiday without his permission.

I think about legacy a lot, hopefully at the end of the day they say I was a good bluesman. That's all I want.

After me there are no more jazz singers . . . It's a crime that no little singer is back there sockin' it to me in my field. To keep it going, to keep it alive, because I'm not going to live forever.

Eventually, when I recorded 'Release Me,' it sort of stamped my style, and I've followed in that vein ever since.

There are a lot of classical musicians in my family, so I grew up with that being kind of normal.