Music Producers From The United Kingdom

"Noel Gallagher: "There's nothing he can't do on a guitar. I've been in the studio with him. He's played on Oasis tracks and stuff. The man's a fucking wizard. I've seen Johnny Marr on the telly and he had thick black shades on, a white polo neck, a Brian Jones bowl head, a red semi-acoustic, a pair of jeans and I don't know what he had on his feet, but I thought "That's it. That's what I want to look like.""

"Birkenstock desert boots have been a part of pop culture since the beatniks. I made such a fuzz about them being discontinued that the company send me an "lifetime supply", which initially turned out to be seven pairs at two years apiece. They weren’t giving me very long. I think that’s why I gave up smoking."

"Marr has been described as "arguably Britain's last great guitar stylist", a "God-like genius", and most affectionately, "the man who would not solo". No matter the title, Johnny Marr effortlessly shrugged off once-ironclad notions. Unafraid to lay back, Marr's jangly sound, open tunings, melody-ridden arpeggios and chordal chiming are all notable components of his playing style."

"About the cover of "The world wont’ listen" It represents the band to me. On the front you've got four guys who look like, if not the band, then Smiths fans. On the back you've got the female side of it - individually they really look like the Smiths: Morrissey on the far right, me on the second right, Andy [Rourke, bass] on the second left and Mike [Joyce, drums] on the far left. To find a picture like that is really clever. We didn't discuss it, but I understood."

"Q: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received? JM: Never get into a situation you can’t get out of. I really have stuck to it, because it’s good advice for all walks of live."

"When I crashed my BMW and managed to walk away pretty much unscathed, it was a turning point. I'd been living the life, and when people see photos of the car wreck, they can't believe I got away with it. It was like a fog had lifted. I stopped drinking a bottle of Tequila before grabbing my car keys. It was time to wise-up and get a haircut."

"I sometimes wonder whether we're the last dying breath of that '60's grim working class thing! I often feel like we're that one solitary clog left in the middle of the Arndale Centre! The idea of taking that spirit of optimism and of possible change and trying to use it in '84 I don't see anything wrong with at all. But more important than that are the images we grew up with: smokey chimneys, backstreets, the impressions I get from Morrissey's lyrics. It isn't just nostalgia, it's a Northern spirit, a working man's spirit - and here I'm trying to not sound like Gary Kemp doing the working class bit. But we're more about the working class values in the '60's than Rickenbackers and Brian Jones haircuts... Certainly we don't feel restrained musically in any way by the period. What I'm saying is we do not confuse roots with formula. The formula we're prepared to slash away at, musically try things we've never done before. But the roots are the reason why we're here. That's something I'll never get away from. I'm always aware of why we started and I think that's a good thing. Those reasons are still valid."

"And now I know how Joan of Arc felt Now I know how Joan of Arc felt As the flames rose to her And her started to melt"

"I've always believed that any instrumentalist is basically just an accompanist to the singer and the words. That's born out of being a fan of records before I was a fan of guitar players -- I'm interested in melody, lyrics, and the overall song. I don't like to waste notes, not even one. Who was it that said, "The reason why all those guitar players play so many notes is because they can't find the right one"? I like to put the right note in the right place, and my influences have always been those kinds of players. Keith Richards comes to mind, and I really like Nils Lofgren's soloing, because he's so melodic. I love John Lennon's rhythm playing, and George Harrison was an incredible guitarist. There's a lot of guitar culture that I don't like at all. I find the traditional idea of the guitar hero to be really irrelevant to the 1990s. I don't think that young people are that impressed with some guy brandishing Spandex trousers and a hideously shaped guitar, playing that kind of masturbatory, egotistical noise. Being a soloist who wants to just display virtuosity is a dated philosophy, and I don't think there's any room for it in pop music. It's the last stand of late-'60s/early-'70s rockism, and it should have gone a long time ago."

"I think when something's over, events have a way of conspiring to make you realise that it's over. As cryptic as that sounds, it's true. Things would happen and I'd be like, Am I going to have to deal with this for the rest of my life? And it was a very, very emotional band. It's in the music. The relationship between me and Morrissey was very emotional. It wasn't volatile in that we would row or anything like that, but it was so intense that if rocked slightly it would be a big deal. Was the lack of a manager important? Massively, I think. I was nursemaiding people when I needed nursemaiding myself. And I couldn't see where we were going to go in the near future musically without repeating ourselves and not being as good."

"Thrown like a star in my vast sleep I open my eyes to take a peep To find that I was by the sea Gazing with tranquillity. 'Twas then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man Came singing songs of love..."

"Histories of ages past Unenlightened shadows cast. Down through all eternity The crying of humanity. 'Tis then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man Comes singing songs of love..."

"Lord, kiss me once more, fill me with song Allah, kiss me once more that I may, that I may Wear my love like heaven Wear my love like Wear my love like heaven."

"The great Egyptian age is but a remnant of The Atlantian culture. The antediluvian kings colonised the world All the gods who play in the mythological dramas In all legends from all lands were from fair Atlantis. Knowing her fate, Atlantis sent out ships to all corners of the Earth. On board were the Twelve: The Poet, the Physician, the Farmer, the Scientist, The Magician and the other so-called Gods of our legends. Though gods they were —"

"I'm just mad about Fourteen Fourteen's mad about me"

"Electrical banana Is gonna be a sudden craze Electrical banana Is bound to be the very next phase..."

"Let us rejoice and let us sing and dance and ring in the new: Hail Atlantis!"

"Wear your love like heaven."

"When I look out my window, Many sights to see. And when I look in my window, So many different people to be..."

"You've got to pick up every stitch. Mmm... must be the season of the witch, Must be the season of the witch."

"I'll pick up your hand and slowly blow your little mind 'Cause I made my mind up you're going to be mine."

"I'm just mad about Saffron Saffron's mad about me I'm just mad about Saffron She's just mad about me."

"Sunshine came softly through my a-window today Could've tripped out easy a-but I've a-changed my ways It'll take time, I know it but in a while You're gonna be mine, I know it, we'll do it in style 'Cause I made my mind up you're going to be mine."

"They call me mellow yellow (Quite rightly) They call me mellow yellow..."

"Way down below the ocean where I wanna be she may be."

"I'll tell you right now Any trick in the book now, baby, all that I can find..."

"We are magic. It is magic that we're walking around. It's fantastic magic. Some people would call it miracles; I like to call it magic. … Yes, I'm very aware of this. Yes, the more aware I get, the more I can understand how big it is, how big it will get. It'll be harder to comprehend; that's why I have to go along with it, 'cause its so vast. To say to somebody that God is everything that lives and ever has lived and ever will live, and you're never going to touch and see, smell and be everything that is God. Magic is very hard to comprehend."

"It seemed — in 1968 — the possibilities of peace and brotherhood could be realised that very year. We're still working on it."

"The magic that you hear in tales and things was all based around the Celtic mythology of England, which is Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings. I just drain from that source. I just drain everything. So the magic is there."

"In the chilly hours and minutes Of uncertainty I want to be In the warm hold of your lovin' mind. To feel you all around me And to take your hand Along the sand, Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind."

"Today I can’t comment on what the problem is in China, Russia, or Africa without realizing again and again the Diamond Sutra, which says that we look at the world and see it as separate but in fact, this is an illusion, but the reality is that we are one shining being. Until this can be understood, I can’t see any change. But I see some change now. There is a world consciousness. In the "old" New Age, they talked about the Age of Aquarius being an age of enlightenment. And now when a man goes to the moon he sees the earth. Before when someone did meditation he or she could meditate on the earth and the moon but now a man and a woman can see that we are on one planet and that the water is polluted and that the air is dirty. So these are changes that are important. But when we spoke about these things in the 60s people said we were dreamers."

"For me to love you now Would be the sweetest thing, 'Twould make me sing, Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind."

"When I was 14 or 15 I wanted to be a protest singer like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. My father was a socialist and worked with the unions. I thought change was to change the government and to change from one system, capitalism, to socialism and to make the poor of the world happy. But when I opened the book The Way of Zen by Alan Watts and I opened up the Diamond Sutra, and Lao Tsu’s Tao Te Ching, I realized that the problem of suffering was much deeper than governments and social problems. The problems were very deep. They were nothing short of changing the way we look at reality. Therefore I became a teacher, or a reflection of the teachings. Phil Ochs, the great protest singer, said I had given up protest, and Joan Baez said to Bob Dylan, “He’s given up protest.” But what I had given up was looking for the answer in social change. The change was to be a spiritual change. The suffering was coming from an erroneous view of reality..."

"The softer you sing, the louder you're heard."

"We are one, we are all brothers and sisters, but the people of the world do not know this. So this was the teaching, but how do you teach it? As young people, John Lennon, George Harrison, myself, Carlos Santana and other spiritual seekers in pop music, we wanted to know the answer but we found a question: How do you convince the rest of the western world that they are ill, they are mentally ill, that they have a sickness and that they have lost the way? How do you teach that? You cannot teach that in the normal sense. You have to encourage a spiritual call, so we devoted ourselves to making songs which would have a spiritual call inside of them, hoping to awaken an awareness with this music. And other people in the arts felt the same..."

"When rain has hung the leaves with tears I want you near to kill my fears, To help me to leave all my blues behind. For standin' in your heart Is where I want to be And long to be, Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind."

"The most important of my achievements, if you want to call them that, was that I successfully introduced mystical ideas into pop culture, which was my obsession and my compulsion when I was 16 years old. So, behind all of this fame and fortune, there was a seeker, on a spiritual path — a young man who wanted to discover and share with others an alternative way of looking at the world. I wanted to save our culture from the stupidity and the bigotry and the ignorance that threatened it. And there was the Buddhist way, and the Celtic way."

"I found myself at the top of the the ladder, with everything, but with one thing missing: that one thing was a companion. Because, it's cliché to say, but nothing really means anything in the end unless you're really doing what you want to do, and... I walked off a huge world tour, with a yacht and television specials, and record deals, and film deals. I walked away and my whole thing collapsed. I shocked my business world and walked back to my cottage, which I had been renting to two American girls. One of them was Cynthia, and I stayed with her for two days, then her friend Lori came back from Clapton's house, where there had been a party going on for almost a week. Lori came in with another friend, and it was Linda, my Sunshine Supergirl from 1965 whom I'd written all my songs for. We hadn't married then, because she had a child with Brian Jones and wasn't ready for another relationship. And it was good that we didn't marry back then, because my four years of '60's fame would have wrecked the marriage. But we met again, and I went away from fame and into the arms of my muse, my lover, and then my wife, and then the mother of my children."

"I still carry with me the same themes as always — I'm still compelled to present mystic ideas..."

"Up to '67, the drugs were, uh, soft. Marijuana, and even LSD, I considered soft drugs then. But, then, after '67, needle drugs and the strong amphetamines came in, and that's when the Beatles and Donovan stood up and said, 'Try meditation instead.' And I still stick by that, of course. You've got to be very, very careful. I'm talking about naive days, before the drug barons and the dealers took over. It was once a small, bohemian event. But it was when millions started wanting to get high that it got bad. And when Haight-Asbury turned into Skid Row, the Beatles and me stood up and said, 'Give it a rest.' The answer is that each individual must face the problem by himself. And meditation is an alternative. Meditation is a lot better for you, and it's great to be straight."

"There is a reason for me always shoe-gazing. I simply can't look into the eyes of several thousand people. (Toronto Sun newspaper)"

"They may not like us, but they can't get away from knowing who we are. (Spin magazine 1988)"

"A couple of years ago, we went to Eurodisney. That too was bearable, although it was a bit weird when Mickey Mouse came to ask for an autograph. (Humo Magazine, 2000)"

"But everyone I know reaches a point where they throw out their arms and go beserk for a while; otherwise you never know what your limits are. I was just trying to find mine. (Guitar Player magazine 1992)"

"There have been very few virtuosos in the history of the group, but there have been a lot of really nice people. The Cure backstage is a notoriously fun-filled zone. (JAM TV)"

"If Morrissey says not to eat meat, then I’m going to eat meat; that’s how much I hate Morrissey. (Q, May 1989)"

"Originally I was going to take perverse satisfaction in making a depressing album. (Spin magazine 1989)"

"Refusing to grow up is like refusing to accept your limitations. That's why I don't think we'll ever grow up. (Melody Maker magazine 1992)"

"We wouldn't have been able to handle the fame if it would've hit us all of the sudden. When I was young I always dreamed of having a group that was adored by few and ignored by the rest of the world, like Nick Drake. Fortunately, when we became famous, I had no time to reflect upon anything anymore. (De Standaard newspaper 2001)"

"I could write songs as bad as Wham's if I really felt the urge to, but what's the point? (The Hit magazine 1985)"