Pianists From England

"The streets seemed very crowded, I put on my bravest guise I know you know that I am acting, I can see it in your eyes."

"I literally left school and went straight into music via art college for a year, and I've been so involved in my job of writing songs that the more actively involved part became channelled into standing on the stage and saying things that way. It's only now that it's come full circle and I'm using my voice again in a way that's tying everything together."

"THE LAST LIVING ROSE:"

"Even when I feel really happy, it's never enough. The only way it seems that I can reach 'enough' is through music. I've never found a relationship that is 'enough'. Sometimes when I do feel really happy, I write some of the most horrible songs! It doesn't stop my songwriting at all, I don't need to be tortured and angst-ridden to write."

"LET ENGLAND SHAKE:"

"I'm probably much more influenced by film-makers and painters than I am by other songwriters or poets…With songs I almost see the images, see the action, and then all I have to do is describe it. It's almost like watching a scene from a film, and that's what I go about trying to catch in a song."

"…I'm always looking for extremes in things. That's what I try to do in my music, push something as far as you can take it. Until it becomes almost unacceptable."

"'Cause it's not right I'm magnetised To somebody that don't feel it Love paralyzed She's never gonna need me But sure as the world keeps the moon in the sky She'll keep me hanging on"

"I never believed from the day that I met you A loser like me could ever get you When we go out I hear people saying "What's that beautiful girl doing with him?""

"I know what you told me I know that it's all over And I know I can't keep calling Just every time I run I keep on falling on you"

"You should look at your reflection If you wanna see a lie You're heading in the right direction If you wanna pick a side Give me more perfection if you wanna see me cry Oh if you wanna love somebody I'm your guy"

"And I wanna kiss you, make you feel alright I'm just so tired to share my nights I wanna cry and I wanna love But all my tears have been used up On another love, another love All my tears have been used up"

"I'd like to say that maybe we could work it out But I know that it's no use If I ever find anyone half as good as you I think maybe that will do"

"Offending people is better than no reaction at all."

"What I know of this world is what my senses have told me."

"Often we'll verge on embarrassing territory, a certain over-the-topness. But maybe that's just trying to unveil something that's inside all of us."

"I think Muse won because Matt Bellamy is a guitar hero for the 21st century. He's genuinely innovative, a real creative type who comes up with unique guitar parts."

"To find out where the origin of symmetry is would be to find out if God exists."

"The differential between the bubble we live in — which is ‘ordinary life’ — and the reality out there is almost as heavy as what is being depicted in a film like ‘the Matrix’. It could make you puke to make that step towards finding out what’s really going on."

"Musical genius Matthew Bellamy — Freddie Mercury meets Kurt Cobain meets Thom Yorke…and a hell of a nice and humble guy."

"You could be my unintended choice To live my life extended. You could be the one I'll always love. You could be the one who listens To my deepest inquisitions. You could be the one I'll always love."

"A thought struck me: if my new album sounds this good on a walkman, what would sound like? A mere two years later I bought one and found out. However, on a train, a few years later still, I had negative eating a bacon sandwich and listening to a solo Ferry album, which turned me vegetarian."

"The Pianoforte Sonatas of Beethoven must always be among the choicest possessions of all who love music and especially of those who make music their main object and study."

"The lights are much brighter there; You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares and go Downtown where all the lights are bright, Downtown, waiting for you tonight, Downtown, you're gonna be alright now."

"I pick myself up off the ground to have you knock me back down Again and again and when I ask you to explain You say, you've got to be... Cruel to be kind in the right measure Cruel to be kind it's a very good sign Cruel to be kind means that I love you Baby, you got to be cruel, you got to be cruel to be kind."

"And so it goes and so it goes But where it's goin' no one knows."

"You know, the actual punk music, I didn't care for at all. I thought it was all rubbish, really. It was the attitude, the way that things were being shaken up, that excited me more. I still liked people who were good, you know? Who could actually play. Even though The Damned were a punk group, they played great. As did Elvis, and as did Ian. They were the ones who interested me. Not some of those daft punkers, especially the ones who had people who were actually pretty good musicians sort of pretending to play badly. That was just so stupid, and missed the point completely, I thought. So it was the people who were true to themselves, I think, that were the exciting ones."

"Even if I was really prolific — which I'm not — I think I'd always put at least a couple of covers on my record. I think it's a sort of healthy thing to do. It shows that you're not totally self-obsessed."

"So where are the strong And who are the trusted? And where is the harmony? Sweet harmony — 'cause each time I feel it slippin away, it just makes me wanna cry: What's so funny 'bout Peace, Love, and Understanding?"

"As I walk through This wicked world Searchin' for light in the darkness of insanity, I ask myself Is all hope lost? Is there only pain and hatred, and misery? And each time I feel like this inside, Theres one thing I wanna know: What's so funny 'bout Peace, Love, and Understanding?"

"I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll."

"I've always felt quite like an outsider. I don't really belong in the mainstream, and I quite like that."

"I wasn't part of that hothouse thing. I didn't go to the Yehudi Menuhin school. I grew up with the idea of trying to make music available to people of all abilities." The Guardian - 26/05/2000"

"What was most odd was that teachers would tell you what to do and what to think and they would write everything on a blackboard and you would copy it all down." The Evening Standard - 04/07/2002"

"I'm trained quite classically but quite freely by my mum, so even when I was little, I had this rather freewheeling approach. When I trained more seriously in my late teens at college, it was: here are the notes, here is what is expected of you. I didn't mind because you need technique, particularly on the piano, which requires a lot of stamina. And it was natural that once I had done that, I would want to go beyond classical music. How can you be yourself if all you do is reproduce someone else's notes?" The Guardian - 05/10/2001"

"Not only was I fiddling around at the keyboard but there were all these other children of all backgrounds wanting to play every sort of music bits of classical, jazz, pop, improvisation." The Guardian - 26/05/2000"

"I can see it must seem strange, but to me it was normality. Really, my memory of my childhood is that the sun always shone and I spent all my time playing in the park. Since then I've discovered that some of the great musicians I admire - Charles Ives, John Cage, even Bob Dylan - had quite unconventional childhoods." Evening Standard - 04/07/2002"

"School was strange, rather amusing - with a teacher standing at the front telling you what to write. The camaraderie was interesting. I tend to remember the things you can't recreate on your own - queuing up for your dinner, learning team games, which were a complete mystery to me. I remember having to pretend I knew how to play hockey, that kind of thing." The Mail on Sunday - 06/02/2000"

"I used to do Grade Exams, but my mum will tell you I didn't over-practise for them at all. I never practised, just played. I loved to play. I loved to play a lot* If one mistake is made with young children, it is trying to make them practise rather than just letting them play.' She played hymns at church ('My parents were very religious when we were young') and 'all the Top of the Pops number ones next morning at school. Things like David Bowie's "Life On Mars". That's got a very good piano part. And ever since I was six or seven years old, I always liked Bach - that's why I recorded the Anna Magdalene Notebook, little 16-bar preludes that Bach wrote for children.' I was amazed at how serious the other kids were about the whole thing, much more disciplined than I was, and with this attitude of "Ooh, I can't play sports because I might hurt my fingers" or "I can't listen to pop music because that's really terrible."

"As I get older I realise that start has made me rather, well, different. It set down a tremendous template for the rest of my life. I grew up believing the piano is a great instrument because you can play everything on it."

"I was given so much advice. About how my hair should be, what I should wear, which competitions I should enter, what stuff I should play. None of that was relevant for me. I just had a kind of instinct."

"My education was very intensive and I applied that training later on to playing the piano. I had always played, but having no one to compare myself to, I had no idea if I was any good."

"I've played Bach since I was a little girl. I can't let a day go by without playing him. He's so witty and secretive and funny and mathematical and brilliant."

"We're really not very good about putting music in a social and political context, particularly classical music. It's all sort of above everything. But in South Africa, everything is politicised. You play a piece of classical music out there and you are making a real cultural statement. Or you play with a marimba band and you are saying something else. I think that's the way things should be. The way people write about music makes it seem completely devoid of social context. And audiences drift away as a result."

"Classical music has struggled to keep up. Unlike any other art form, it keeps on looking backwards all the time. It used to have a real museum culture. Then it went: "Oh my God, what are we going to do? Call for Nigel Kennedy. Quick!" Classical musicians have got to change or die,' she asserts strongly, 'but they just don't know how to. Audiences for classical music have dropped. The old blue rinse audience is dying out, and young people aren't coming in."

"The freedom of improvising over a bass line disappeared from music only in the 19th century, and we're still paying for it. There's a culture among classical musicians of being passive, and it stems from following the notes, rather than one's own instincts."

"The musicians who interest me most are people like Nitin Sawhney, Talvin Singh, Django Bates. They are not just writing music but performing it, recording it, putting tours together and running their own labels. That is what real musicians are, rather than over-publicised specialists."

"My favorite composers tend to be great improvisers as well as great players. It doesn't matter whether they're contemporary or classical."

"A lot of musicians are going to have to retrain. It's nonsense to say that traditional classical music is more complex. Contemporary pieces by Harrison Birtwistle are much harder to play than Mozart or Wagner. I know a lot of people don't want to hear that."

"Classical musicians can sometimes get very hung up on the idea that there's a right way and there's a wrong way. You can see this destroy a lot of players. Jazz musicians have a way of understanding that there are a lot of different ways of doing things. That's what's great about them, they're so friendly. And they are so individualistic - that's why they can accept someone like me."