Musical Hiatus Quotes

It's really weird to be playing chords again. Haven't played chords for a long time. I realised I haven't played chord changes since OK Computer and stuff like that.

I've seen bands split up for five years and do nothing. That sounds great to me, but it just hasn't worked out that way.

Well, let's see: I started [in music] at nine and quit. Then got back to it when I was twelve. Then I became a party star. In fact, I became a party!

The idea [of A Period of Transition album] was to get a break from everything for a while because I've been doing it for so long. I started doing it when I was 12.

I stopped singing and they gave me an award.

When I got sick this past summer, I couldn't - my mind just wasn't on music. The rest of the band understood. But once October came, I felt ready to get back again.

...I got a call from a record company offering me a contract, I did not want to take it because the Lord had pointed me in the direction of spiritual activity...And then it was disclosed to me that I could do both spiritual and musical work. So for five years I executed that contract, and when it was finished, after I made the album Transfiguration, I didn't make another album until twenty-six years later. This new album, Translinear Light, came out of the pleading and constant appealing from my son Ravi Coltrane: 'Ma, please make a CD.' So I eventually agreed.

After 'Return Of The Bumpasaurus' in '96, I just got away from music for, like, a year. Literally, I think I produced two songs in a year. I was totally kicking it, running around.

I never stopped writing music, I just stopped writing songs. I've been writing music continually ever since the last album of original tunes, "River Of Dreams" in '93.

The Band was always famous for its retirements; we'd go and play and get a little petty cash together, and then not see each other till it was time to fill our pockets up again.

I was trying to actively get away from music, I guess. But I recorded a whole bunch of instrumental piano songs.

I wanted to come back to the guitar after three albums and almost 10 years. I started to miss this instrument and I wanted to come back to the guitar.

Blues musicians don't retire. They drop.

The people that can't sing anymore that had great voices are the people that went away for five years and then just decided to come back. And you just can't make a comeback. Comebacks are no good. You have to just keep singing. Or keep dancing.

"Snapped" happened maybe like two months after I released the mixtape. I just like took a break from recording and that was the first song I wrote and recorded after the mixtape.