Musical Risk Taking Quotes

I got a chance to work with Miles Davis, and that changed everything for me, 'cause Miles really encouraged all his musicians to reach beyond what they know, go into unknown territory and explore. It's made a difference to me and the decisions that I've made over the years about how to approach a project in this music.

When we were starting out as a band in New York, we played a concert at a small club early on and asked Lady Gaga to open for us. We were big fans, and she had the same kind of approach to music as we did: not taking everything so seriously and just having fun.

I'm not really allowed to talk about the Dead though. I think when we are at our best, we definitely do things that the Dead or no other band could do. We explore things and take things to the extreme.

If you're always playing the correct notes, there's something wrong - you're not searching; you're not reaching for anything.

But I've always liked to be the kind of drummer and musician who likes to go outside of what's expected of me, and I've always been able to do more than you necessarily hear with every band I've ever played in.

I could have pigeonholed us and wrote a whole record like 'Pumped Up Kicks,' and we would have been this breezy, nostalgic West Coast Beach Boys recreation band. That's not the type of writer I am. Once I try one style, I move on.

I've been called 'musically schizophrenic,' and some people think that's a cool thing.

What happened with reggaeton is that many artists kept recycling the same sound. But there are a lot of reggaeton artists that are still in their prime - like Daddy Yankee - because they've chosen to continue growing, to offer people more than just reggaeton. That's where I learned to always be able to try something new and not be afraid.

I've never been one to just play safe music and think that's all there is to it.

There is a reactionary conservative side of classical music, which is not the most exciting side of it. The side that draws me in, there's a real encouragement of risk-taking, going back to masters of that tradition like Beethoven and Bartok and Stravinsky.

I've always had creative freedom. Instrumental rock wasn't really a genre, but the success of 'Surfing With the Alien' legitimized my approach.

When we did 'Eliminator,' at the time, it was experimental for us. It obviously turned out real successful, but at the time, we caught crap about it from some of our old fans. They thought we were deserting our roots or our old style or whatever.

I wanted to make good records. But my problem is I've got a low boredom threshold, so I wanted it to look and sound different with each album, which is really tantamount to suicide, cause people lose it, they lose it - they say: 'I like that, and that's not this.'

King Crimson is never easy; it's challenging. That's why I like it.

I'm always ready to be challenged. Like, 'Wings: Outro,' it was hip-house. That was the first time I'd ever listened to that genre... but I liked it.

I've heard some people say that I'm selling out, but I'm not. If I hadn't done 'Black Radio', and just kept on doing just piano trio stuff, I wouldn't be honest with myself; I'd be doing it to please other people. That would be selling out.

Joining a band without ever having really met the people before, you just want to be musically powerful.

David Harrington, who's the violinist and founder of Kronos, is a super open-minded and adventurous guy.

What's cool about indie rock is that one band can do effectively the same thing as another band, and one band nails it, and the other one doesn't. I like that elusiveness.

There's a Nina Simone record that I love, 'Live at Vine Street,' and she sings flat on it. I can imagine she might've told the record label, 'Oh, God, you're not releasing that!' But I'm glad they did.

What I ended up learning was that I had to do what I do well, and do it really well and say, 'Maybe there is no pop music that sounds like this now, but I can make it so maybe tomorrow what I like can be what everybody likes.'

I'm still more comfortable with standards than with my own songs.

Now one thing I think is really lame, is if you're an artist and you go to a karaoke bar and sing your own song. I like to get up there and sing stuff that I would never sing on stage anywhere else. Like Neil Diamond.

'Enlightened Rogues' we made like the earlier ones: whatever tune came up, whatever direction it went in, that's the way it went. That's what we'll always do. I think if we ever stop doin' that, we ought to quit.

I kind of idolized older punk-rock and hip-hop bands, and I was, like, 15 when I started the Beastie Boys. And what business did we having doing that at that age?