Music Producers From England

"A riff will come out of.. this whole thing of do you practice at home and all that. Well, I play at home and before I knew where I was, things would be coming out and that's those little sections or riffs or whatever. At that stage it's selection and rejection. It's whether you continue with something or you go, 'No that's too much like something else,' and then you move into something else. If you've got an idea and you think that's quite interesting, then I'd work and build on it at home. "Rock and Roll" was something that came purely out of the ether."

"You know Paula, who I couldn't look at the beginning of the series... I love her to death now. I hate to admit it but I do."

"Very simple. I'm putting up the money, and I also have ears."

"I changed my diet and I’ve not looked back since. You feel better, you look better. I cut out a lot of the stuff I shouldn’t have been eating and that was primarily meat, dairy, wheat, sugar — those were the four main things. … Once you get into a pattern I’ve found it quite enjoyable. It has helped me sleep and I wake up feeling less tired. I noticed a massive difference in how I felt in about a week. I have more energy and focus and it wasn’t difficult. I don’t like to use the word diet because that’s the reason I never went on a diet before — the word diet makes me miserable."

"If I tape an 11-hour day, guess which parts end up on air. Not the bits when I'm pleasant, but the parts when I'm obnoxious."

"Normally, they want me to be rude to them. People come up to me and sing, and I say "That was great. Thank you." And they're like "Well, aren't you going to be rude to me?" No! When I miss auditions, contestants get upset that I'm not there, because they expect me to be cruel to them — it's some sort of badge of honor. That's how crazy everything is."

"Sinitta and Jackie are my family now. I don't think of them as ex-girlfriends anymore. They are an extension of my life... It must be infuriating, but I'd never change because my ex-girlfriends are so close I couldn't imagine life without them."

"The host is pathetic! The show is pathetic! The audience is pathetic!"

"I see a red door and I want it painted black No colors anymore, I want them to turn black I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes I have to turn my head until my darkness goes I see a line of cars and they're all painted black With flowers and my love, both never to come back I see people turn their heads and quickly look away Like a new born baby, it just happens every day I look inside myself and see my heart is black I see my red door, I must have it painted black Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts It's not easy facing up, when your whole world is black"

"Yes, star-crossed in pleasure, the stream flows on by Yes, as we're sated in leisure, we watch it fly, yes And time waits for no one, and it won't wait for me... Time can tear down a building or destroy a woman's face Hours are like diamonds, don't let them waste Time waits for no one, no favors has he"

"I'd play whenever I could get my hands on an electric guitar; I was trying to pick up rock'n'roll riffs and electric blues-the latest Muddy Waters. I'd spend hours and hours on the same track, back again, and back again."

"What interested me about Chuck Berry was the way he could step out of the rhythm part with such ease, throwing in a nice, simple riff, and then drop straight into the feel of it again. We used to play a lot more rhythm stuff. We'd do away with the differences between lead and rhythm guitar. You can't go into a shop and ask for a "lead guitar". You're a guitar player, and you play a guitar."

"I thought it was ludicrous to take one of those gongs from the establishment...it's not what the Stones is about, is it? I don't want to step out on stage with someone wearing a fucking coronet and sporting the old ermine. I told Mick, It's a fucking paltry honour."

"There are certain guys that are band players and there's certain guys that ain't. If there's anybody lazier than me, it's Eric (Clapton)."

"I looked upon myself, in a sort of romantic and silly way, as like a laboratory."

"I thought rock and roll was an unassailable outlet for some pure and natural expression of rebellion. It used to be one channel you could take without ever havin' to kiss arse, you know?"

"I was number one on the Who's Likely To Die list for 10 years. I mean, I was really disappointed when I fell off the list."

"The idea of retiring is like killing yourself. It's almost like Hari Kari. I intend to live to a 100 and go down in history."

"I don't encourage anybody to do what I do, you know? Why should you? More for me!"

"This morning on Dartford station a guy I knew at primary school came up to me. He's got every record Chuck Berry made. He is called Mick Jagger."

"Rap — so many words, so little said. What rap did that was impressive was to show there are so many tone-deaf people out there. All they need is a drum beat and somebody yelling over it and they're happy. There’s an enormous market for people who can't tell one note from another."

"New Rule: Airplane black boxes must now be made out of Keith Richards. The man, who has taken more drugs than Whitney Houston, Rush Limbaugh and Robert Downey, Jr., combined, recently fell out of a tree, and then crashed a jet ski. And yet, somehow, that cigarette never fell out of his mouth. What is this guy still running on? I've got to know. Because I'm beginning to think the future of medicine isn't injecting stem cells, it's injecting heroin."

"...how come Keith Richards still walks? Explain that Mr. Surgeon General! You never mention Keith do you? Aah, a little hole in the theory there! Surgeon General says, "Drugs are bad, drugs are evil!...except for that guy, they work real good for him, -but the rest of you..."

"Keith Richards is shooting heroin into his eyeballs and still touring all right! I'm getting mixed signals! I picture nuclear war and two things surviving: Keith and cockroaches! (does Keith Richards impression) "Where did everybody go-o? I saw a bright light and thought we were on ...""

"I was reading an interview with Keith Richards in a magazine and in the interview Keith Richards intimated that kids should not do drugs. Keith Richards! Says that kids should not do drugs! Keith, we can't do any more drugs because you already fucking did them all, alright! There's none left! We have to wait 'till you die and smoke your ashes! Jesus Christ! Talk about the pot and the fuckin' kettle."

"I know there is a cure for whatever bioterrorism they throw at us, I know there's one. And it lies within Keith Richards, I do know that. He is the only man on the planet that could go (imitates Keith snorting something) "Anthrax? All right! Doesn't go with my E. coli, but fuck." Keith is the only man who makes The Osbournes look fucking Amish. He's insane. I've seen Keith go to a drug dealer and the drug dealer's goin', "I'm out, man, I'm sorry. I have nothing left!" Supposedly, he goes to Switzerland and changes his blood. Not like one pint, but like a fucking Chevrolet, all of it. I just wanna know, who gets his blood? Some old Swiss man's going, "HEIDI!! We've gotta go on tour, you bitch! We've gotta pay for Mick's babies! COME ON!!!" Because I know this. I know that we may all be dead and gone, Keith will still be there with 5 cockroaches. Keith will go, "Ya know, I smoked your uncle! Did ya know that? Fucking crazy!""

"It was his unique syncopated playing style that defined rhythm guitar in rock 'n' roll."

"If you've got everybody collaborating on a mass scale; you can't be stopped. You can do anything, man. You can move mountains. If all the kids in this estate were a piecing, can you imagine what a beautiful place it would be?"

"I'm the cream Of the great utopia dream. And you're in the gleam In the depths of your banker's spleen."

"This is Major Tom to Ground Control. I'm stepping through the door, And I'm floating in a most peculiar way. And the stars look very different today.For here Am I sitting in a tin can, Far above the world. Planet Earth is blue, And there's nothing I can do."

"Ground Control to Major Tom. Ground Control to Major Tom. Take your protein pills and put your helmet on."

"If our love song Could fly over mountains, Could laugh at the ocean, Just like the films, There's no reason To feel all the hard times, To lay down the hard lines. It's absolutely true.Nothing much could happen Nothing we can't shake Oh we're absolute beginners With nothing much at stake As long as you're still smiling There's nothing more I need I absolutely love you But we're absolute beginners. But if my love is your love We're certain to succeed."

"All the young dudes Carry the news Boogaloo dudes Carry the news."

"I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I'm not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does. There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It's always been my way of expressing what for me is inexpressible by any other means. What is very enlightening for me right now is that I sense that I'm arriving at a place of peace with my writing that I've never experienced before. I think I'm going to be writing some of the most worthwhile things that I've ever written in the coming years. I'm very confident and trusting in my abilities right now. But I've got to think of myself as the luckiest guy. Robert Johnson only had one album's worth of work as his legacy. That's all that life allowed him."

"Heathenism is a state of mind. You can take it that I'm referring to one who does not see his world. He has no mental light. He destroys almost unwittingly. He cannot feel any Gods' presence in his life. He is the 21st century man. However, there's no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums."

"Strangely, some songs you really don't want to write. I didn't like writing "Heathen". There was something so ominous and final about it. It was early in the morning, the sun was rising and through the windows I could see two deer grazing down below in the field. In the distance a car was driving slowly past the reservoir and these words were just streaming out and there were tears running down my face. But I couldn't stop, they just flew out. It's an odd feeling, like something else is guiding you, although forcing your hand is more like it."

"It's odd but even when I was a kid, I would write about "old and other times" as though I had a lot of years behind me. Now I do, so there is a difference in the weight of memory. When you're young, you're still "becoming", now at my age I am more concerned with "being". And not too long from now I'll be driven by "surviving", I'm sure. I kind of miss that "becoming" stage, as most times you really don't know what's around the corner. Now, of course, I've kind of knocked on the door and heard a muffled answer. Nevertheless, I still don't know what the voice is saying, or even what language it's in."

"Ageing is an extraordinary process... If you are pining for youth I think it produces a stereotypical old man because you only live in memory, you live in a place that doesn’t exist … I think ageing is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person that you always should have been."

"Never play to the gallery... Never work for other people in what you do. Always remember that the reason that you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest in some way, you would understand more about yourself and how you co-exist with the rest of society... I think it's terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfil other people's expectations."

"[While filming 'Ashes to Ashes'] So we're on the beach shooting this scene with a giant bulldozer. The camera was on a very long lens. [The camera is along way away, but the artist fills the frame] In this video I'm dressed from head to toe in a clown suit. Why not. I hear playback and the music starts. So off I go, I start singing and walking, but as soon as I do this old geezer with an old dog walk right between me and the camera... Well, knowing this is gonna take a while I walked past the old guy and sat next to camera in my full costume waiting for him to pass. As he is walking by camera the director said, excuse me Mr do you know who this is? The old guy looks at me from bottom to top and looks back to the director and said... "Of course I do!!!! its some cunt in a clown suit." That was a huge moment for me, It put me back in my place and made me realize, yes I'm just a cunt in a clown suit. I think about that old guy all the time."

"Music has given me over 40 years of extraordinary experiences. I can't say that life's pains or more tragic episodes have been diminished because of it. But it's allowed me so many moments of companionship when I've been lonely and a sublime means of communication when I wanted to touch people. It's been both my doorway of perception and the house that I live in. I only hope that it embraces you with the same lusty life force that it graciously offered me."

"I think fame itself is not a rewarding thing. The most you can say is that it gets you a seat in restaurants."

"I'm terribly intuitive—I always thought I was intellectual about what I do, but I've come to the realisation that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing half the time, that the majority of the stuff that I do is totally intuitive, totally about where I am physically and mentally at any moment in time and I have a far harder time than anybody else explaining it and analysing it. That's the territory of the artist anyway: to be quite at sea with what he does, and working towards not being intuive about it and being far more methodical and academic about it."

"I get offered so many bad movies. And they're all raging queens or transvestites or Martians."

"I suppose I’ve been knocking on heaven’s door for about 11 years now, with one sort of high or another. The only kinds of drugs I use, though, are ones that keep me working for longer periods of time. I haven’t gotten involved in anything heavy since ’68. I had a silly flirtation with smack then, but it was only for the mystery and enigma of trying it. I never really enjoyed it at all. I like fast drugs. I’ve said that many times. I hate falling out, where I can’t stand up and stuff. It seems like such a waste of time. I hate downs and slow drugs like grass. I hate sleep. I would much prefer staying up, just working, all the time. It makes me so mad that we can’t do anything about sleep or the common cold."

"I'm an instant star. Just add water and stir."

"Screaming along in South London Vicious but ready to learn Sometimes I fear that the whole world is queer Sometimes but always in vain So I'll wait until we're sane Wait until we're blessed and all the same Full of blood, loving life and all it's got to give Englishmen going insane"

"Let's dance for fear your grace should fall Let's dance for fear tonight is all"

"And if you say run, I'll run with you And if you say hide, we'll hide. Because my love for you Would break my heart in two. If you should fall Into my arms And tremble like a flower."

"Let's dance — put on your red shoes and dance the blues. Let's dance — to the song they're playin' on the radio. Let's sway — while colour lights up your face. Let's swa —, sway through the crowd to an empty space."