Quotes
I was brought up, musically, in the '50s. If you want eccentricity, and that kind of non-verbal world and those kind of weird signals that you have to pick up, you can't beat jazz musicians.
I was brought up with esoteric ideas and modern European music and Stockhausen, Webern, avant-garde poets, and all the kind of avant-garde thing in the '50s, before pop music-the beat poets, the avant-garde painters at the time, and so on.
I thought, well, what should I do that's just like the most unhip thing you can possibly think of? And I thought of the Monkees, and I did I'm a Believer.
I think there is something biologically utterly moronic about racists, because in the end they are advocating incest. Any biologist would tell you that's not a very good way to strengthen one's biological gene pool.
I think the people who did well, or are happy, in a youth industry, they define themselves out of the business after a decade or so.
I think that pop, and to some extent rock, are like sport and fashion industry in that they're about the exuberance of youth. That's the sort of subliminal ideology.
I really liked them, not just Syd, but all of them. Roger was very important, I thought, his contribution. And so was Rick's organ playing. It was a good band. It became something else completely, obviously.
I prefer the mystic clouds of nostalgia to the real thing, to be honest.
I play music a lot but on my own mostly, so it was nice to be around other people. There was a certain sense a relief in the physical act of just playing and being with other musicians.
I only choose musicians who I think will emerge, can emerge, with their own character, while still going along with the tune in question.
I know people who grow old and bitter. I want to keep making a fresh start. I don't want them to defeat me. That would be suicidal.
I have no happy memories of that band at all now, because of the humiliation of being thrown out at the end of it. I never quite got my confidence back from that.
I have never felt in tune with the whole rock industry.
I have certainly been careless. Maybe it is just that I am a slow burner. Ideas take a while to sort of incubate, and then I sort of process them and that is how it goes. Perhaps other people work more in the trajectory of an athlete.
I have a fantastic admiration for really good pop musicians, just straight commercial pop musicians with no hip associations of rock at all.
I get nearer and nearer towards happiness, or a feeling of being relaxed and free, when I can lose myself in my environment.
I find writing songs hard, because it does not come naturally to me. I never set out to be a songwriter or a singer.
I find it hard to take rock groups very seriously or treat them with respect. There is something absurd about these gloomy young men getting together and banging away.
I enjoyed the opportunity to record Moon In June, and to get that onto tape. The first 10 minutes of that I played myself. I had a chance to sort of double-track instruments.
I don't think it's necessary for a painter to invent the things that he paints. If you paint a tree, it's your painting of the tree, it's your choice of color, what you put in and leave it. If you really work it through-interpreting something-it's you.