Smokey Robinson Quotes

Performing is a profound experience, at least for me. It's not as if I sit down and play 'Fire and Rain' by myself, just to hear it again. But to offer it up... the energy that it somehow summons live takes me right back, and I do get a reconnection to the emotions.

I just love musicians. They're not all super-happy all the time, but when they're playing they're happy, and it's such a beautiful thing.

You leave part of yourself on every stage you're on. How could you not live in the air somehow?

My live performance, it just comes from feeling an energy and emotion from the crowd. Just going out there and doing my own stuff and being in front of my own people. I love it.

Music is still above all else the thing that does it for me.

For me, I just want to continue telling stories - whether it's musically or theatrically, this is what I love to do. So, I want to create more.

But I love singing live. Nothing beats the feeling of going out on stage and going, 'I can really sing.'

For me, music is so passionate, I have to give it my all every time I go onstage. Onstage, it was always comfortable for me, because that's where I felt at home.

The greatest feeling in the world is performing and connecting with the audience.

I am not really into paintings, to be honest, but for me, the art I love is when I see singers putting their heart into their song, actors giving the performance of their lives, and books and movies that make me feel something I never thought I could; there's art in everything as long as it's made with soul.

Piano playing consists of common sense, heart and technical resources. All three should be equally developed. Without common sense you are a fiasco, without technique an amateur, without heart a machine. The profession does have its hazards.

I like to work with people who have a sense of putting a song over, and can sing in tune, and with passion. With technology you can polish a turd, but there's still no button you can press for passion.

And it's been a process of digging through the songs and trying to make them born on stage again. I think they are very different. I think they come off very differently. I think they come off, I don't know if it's masculine or outward, extroverted than introverted. I didn't know. It's just been a process.

I think the idea of being on stage and playing for people, and being able to inject a little bit of joy into their lives is a really exciting concept for me. That's definitely why I make music. It's never been for any kind of materialistic reasons, so that thought of being able to be up on stage, and being able to give something to someone in a moment of need for them - that gets me up in the morning; that really excites me.

The performing part of it, that's what I live for. I've always told people that's what I was born for. I believe, with the proper things around me, and everything I need as a performer; band, and all that kind of stuff, I still feel to this day there's no one that can touch me. Still.

The reason I got into acting was the audience is right there and if you did something great they were right there and you knew it.

There might be two or three songs I'm trying out. I've been singing these songs (on the new album) in the studio, but I haven't really done them live. It's intimate to sing them in a studio. Now, I've got to be on a stage and be in front of a lot of people.

I would have found something because I love to entertain people. I had the option to take the rest of the year off. But I said the songs on my last solo album, '24 Karat Gold,' mean so much to me. I need to get out there and sing them.

Just like my career, I've sung the same songs night after night in so many ways. It's always different because every space is different. I lost my mojo once. It was like Austin Powers. I don't know why or how, but I had to get it back. And I did.

It makes me sad when I see artists who come alive when they go onstage, because, gee, I really come alive when I'm home.

I hope to die right in the middle of a song and right on the stage doing what I love to do. I hope to be about 120 when that happens.

My experience of singing, as an actor, was that there's a different creative feeling of freedom. The acting thing is a bit more defined and cerebral. I can see why people would want to cross over. If you have so much freedom on stage then perhaps you want to be confined a bit, and vice versa.

I think if you sing a song for the first time to your mom and dad, or your friends, and they go, 'That's pretty cool'-if you're playing at the local bar somewhere, or the coffee shop, singing songs, or if you have a gig somewhere and you're singing your own songs, I think that's some version of making it. ... It's not just about having commercial success; it's about having a great life.

There's a side to being in a band that some people embrace and some don't: the fact that you're performing and you care about how it comes across.

For me, singing was real life, not two plus two equals four.