John Bonham Quotes

I grew up listening to a lot of soul music, and a lot of folk music.

Music has influenced everything from my tattooing to how I talk to how I walk, I guess. I was classically trained in piano since I was 6. Then in my teens, my older sister introduced me to Metallica. It was all over. I had a mohawk soon after that.

I was never really that interested in the punk movement. I was a blues guy: I liked Motown, James Brown.

Somebody said I sound like an old lady, and I was really insulted by that. I'm trying to sound like Skip James and Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye.

It's funny, because music is one of those things it is natural to go into. You hear it so much growing up, it kind of permeates you and eventually you spew out some music of your own.

As far as long-term goals, one of my favorite artists ever is Tegan and Sara, because every single one of their albums sounds different. Or Beck. I want to be like that because I come from so many different types of musical backgrounds.

My voice is a combination of how I grew up and what I was listening to growing up. I like a lot of different kinds of music and am always being inspired in different ways by different artists for different reasons.

Irving Berlin was the greatest songwriter of all time. I was in awe of him. But his music wasn't my music. My music was the blues.

Growing up, I listened to a lot of everything - I fell in love with music, when I discovered people like Lauryn Hill and Tracy Chapman, people whose voices I could really feel, people with a lot of soul. That's what I'm drawn to as a musician: Anybody that has their own voice and their own point of view.

All my musical influences came from my mom, who did everything to music. She played it 24 hours a day, seven days a week in our house. So that's where my love for music came from.

I'm touched by the Beatles. I want some of the music I do to reflect that. Here I am. I love Sly Stone and James Brown and Stevie Wonder, and I want my music to reflect some of that. Here I am. I'm touched by Jon Hendricks. I want some of my music to reflect that. And when I write, you're going to hear it.

I learn tons of John Frusciante's licks from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I'm never going to play like the Chili Peppers, but I might use that if I've got a dub beat or reggae thing mixed with a soul thing.

The only thing is, with me - this may sound weird - there are a lot of R&B singers from that era that I actually don't know. Like, I never grew up on Boyz II Men.

My mum and dad used to listen to a lot of R&B and soul, so this was the way I grew up. Hip-hop, of course. But then as I grew older, I started listening to everything.

Growing up, I was listening to a ton of Motown music, Otis Redding, Aretha, and then there was the Beatles and Led Zeppelin and Janis Joplin. These were all people that I felt as though they truly felt every single lyric they said, and they weren't afraid of imperfection.

There are a lot of people who wonder why Japan is a pretty consistent influence in my music, and I think it's because the reason I started writing - my intro to electronic music was Japanese music.

I think... people are inspired by our music, and that's cool. We all borrow each other's music.

In my home, we listened to music all the time. I was raised through music, and I've been interested in it since I was three.

My father played music, so I was always around music, even from the time I was born. My father actually was the one that originally got me into music.

One thing I know about Willie Hutch: my homie, [Big] Jerm, listens to nothing but Soul music, so he put me on to all this Soul music back in the day.

I'm very eclectic in what I like and what I listen to. But my favorite musical ever is "The Sound of Music." That was actually one that inspired me to sing.

Amy Winehouse: Did she invent white soul? Wearing a beehive? No. But she did something brand new and fresh, altogether as a package, and you see who's in her wake, from the Duffys to the Lana Del Reys. Adele selling 20 million records? That would not have happened if Amy Winehouse was alive.

I used to say that I was making "country music," because it was the quickest, easiest answer. I'm obviously heavily influenced by country music. There was a three-year stint in my life where I listened to nothing else, so, I learned it very well.

I think it's maybe because Sergeant Pepper's came out when I was about 13 or 14 and that was a pretty impressionable age, and it was such a kind of radical period. But that period of the Beatles really had a big influence on me and I think are directly related to hyperinstruments.

Kenny Burrell that's the sound I'm looking for.