Musicians From England

"Always ask for advice but never take it."

"If nobody likes your work, you have to go on just for the sake of the work. And you're in no danger of letting the public make you repeat yourself. Every artist ought to pray that he may not be "a success". If he's a failure he stands a good chance of concentrating upon the best work of which he's capable."

"Never compose anything unless the not composing of it becomes a positive nuisance to you."

"Play it like something you hear down by the river."

"His range is so Handelian that he can give the people a universal melody or march with as sure a hand as he can give the Philharmonic Society a symphonic adagio, such as has not been given since Beethoven died."

"People who talk of the spread of music in England and the increasing love of it, rarely seem to know where the growth of the art is really strong and properly fostered: some day the press will awake to the fact, already known abroad and to some few of us in England, that the living centre of music in Great Britain is not London, but somewhere further North."

"The aggressive Edwardian prosperity that lends so comfortable a background to Elgar's finales is now as strange to us as the England that produced Greensleeves and The Woodes so wilde. Stranger, in fact, and less sympathetic. In consequence much of Elgar's music, through no fault of its own, has for the present generation an almost intolerable air of smugness, self-assurance and autocratic benevolence."

"To my friends pictured within."

"The enigma I will not explain – its "dark saying" must be left unguessed, and I warn you that the apparent connection between the variations and the theme is often of the slightest texture."

"Elgar is not manic enough to be Russian, not witty or pointilliste enough to be French, not harmonically simple enough to be Italian and not stodgy enough to be German. We arrive at his Englishry by pure elimination."

"I always said God was against art and I still believe it. Anything obscene or trivial is blessed in this world and has a reward – I ask for no reward – only to live & to hear my work."

"My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us, the world is full of it and you simply take as much as you require."

"What made a big difference was the open door policy we had. Anyone who wanted to come backstage could, and it was never a problem. I don't know whether other bands did that. It was good for us to meet people who had come to see the group and converse with them, ask them 'What's it like in your town? What, there are no clubs here? So what do you do?' It was about sharing information and it was good to know what was going on out there, and how people were dealing with their lives. And that spread right across the world."

"I've got one thing to say about being the bass player … I didn't want the role of being Entwhistle or Bill Wyman, stuck in the background. That's too depressing and if that was what I'd been offered with The Clash I would've turned it down. Maybe that's the nature of the job, or has been in the past; the bass player as the one that held the fort, so to speak, along with the drummer, letting every body else go lunatic. But, y'know — why can't we all be lunatics?"

"If you've lost your faith in love and music, oh, the end won't be long."

"We'll be Libertines until the day we die."

""The Human League, Someday all music will be made like this!" — and it is!"

"Scenario: In the summer of 1977 The Human League was formed due to the members finding no conventional channels for their immense talents. Background: None of The Human League have any orthodox musical training, but prefer to regard compositions as an extension of logic, inspiration and luck. Therefore, unlike conventional musicians, their influences are not so obvious. Conclusion/Manifesto: Interested in combining the best of all worlds, The League would like to positively affect the future by close attention to the present, allying technology with humanity and humour. They have been described as 'Later Twentieth Century Boys' and 'Intelligent, Innovatory and Immodest'."

"What better job is there for a 17-year-old girl than being in a pop group?"

"No composer has written as much as 100 bars of worthwhile music since 1925."

"The grand tune is the only thing in music that the great public really understands."

"If I cannot sing a work, I cannot conduct it."

"A city life for me!"

"The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought."

"A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it."

"What can you do with it? It's like a lot of yaks jumping about.""

"I found it as alluring as a wayward woman and determined to tame it."

"Too much counterpoint; what is worse, Protestant counterpoint."

"Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory."

"The musical equivalent of the towers of St Pancras Station"

"Asked if he had ever conducted any Stockhausen, he said, "No, but I once trod in some.""

"The whole planet is the museum!"

"... used to be the fight for the means of production, now it's the fight for the means of perception ... or the meme's of perception ... they who control the meme's of perception design each universe I would say"

"After thee accumulation of too much history we have lost our innocence, we cannot easily believe in any explanations. We describe rather than feel, we touch rather than explore, we lust rather than adore."

"The bottom line is that the human species has to realize the human body really is just a cheap suitcase."

"An exact science is one that admits loss."

"In those old hotels, everything creaks: Argh, argh, argh. Even the door: Argh! You can always hear the bloke above you moving around, and when it's three in the morning you turn into his wife: "That's the fourth time tonight. Go back to fucking bed!""

"They're making us pay a fortune for electricity, ya know. They reckon we should save the planet, save electricity and all that sort of stuff. Oh, yeah, I'm loving this shit they're coming out with! You got the Chinese bellowing out shit for coal-fired power stations, the Americans are driving about in 4x4 Humvees, Las Vegas is lit up like a giant Christmas tree, but they reckon if I switch off this little standby button on my TV..."

"Some footballers earn a fortune. 30 grand, 40 grand, 90 grand a week, some of them. And then they say stuff in interviews like "I'm not really enjoying the football at the moment." Not enjoying the football? 90 grand a week? I'd be fucking delirious with it! I wouldn't just hug somebody for scoring a goal, I'd shag 'em."

"Why are all the dogs at dog shows really nice dogs? You never see a pit bull with a ribbon 'round his head, going "If you say one fucking word...""

"Our grandparents fucking ate anything put in front of them! Your granddad would say "What's for tea, love?" "Tripe!" "Oooooohh! Animal stomach lining for fucking tea, man!" They ate anything, fucking monkey's phlegm, orangutan's bollocks. I dunno, I'm just making them up now... chicken's quiff!... Bird's arse, ya know!"

"The post is all messed up! Remember when it was so easy? You posted a letter, the post office just went woof, and it was away. Not now, they're all differant companies. It's like Parcel Force! Parcel Force? "PARCEL FORCE! BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! PARCEL FORCE! BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! WE WILL GET THIS PACKAGE TO YOU!" Fuck off!"

"Luv can we off off, not off off but fuck off."

"People tell me, "Lee, you should take up golf. It's good for you." You know what I say to that? "Fuck off.""

"I love restaurants. And that's the thing now, they always boast about now, restaurants: "Proper home-made cooking." I don't want home-made cooking. That's why I'm here, 'cos I don't like the shit at home! Yeah... you know! And they don't say whose home it is, do they! Could be a mental home, couldn't it!"

"You ever get lost with your wife in the car? You're completely lost, and they always say the same thing: "Oh, let's just go home. WE'RE FUCKING LOST!" "What, did you throw bread out the fucking window?""

"You know, you get these people that are, like, "Here, I was talking to her on Monday... Was it Tuesday? Was it Thurs-?" "Who cares? Just tell me what they fucking said!" I hate them fuckers! They say stuff like, "Feels like a Tuesday. Does it feel like a Tuesday? Yeah, feels like a Tuesday." I don't know! How the fuck does Tuesday feel? They're like, "It's half past five, but it only feels like twelve." Fucking hell, do these people forget to go to bed because they already think they're asleep?"

"This bloke, I swear he's in any supermarket car park. He's great. He walks across the car park, and he's got one of those fobs, and he opens his car before he gets there. [posh voice] "Ha, ha, ha! I don't know if you saw what I just did there, but I actually opened my car door before I actually physically got there!""

"What happened to all the family butchers? People complain there's no family butchers around anymore. Well, they're fucking mad! It's the only shop in the high street where you walk in and some bloke's covered in blood, mutilating an animal! Before you walk in, they're like that: "Grrr, GAAAH, FUCKING-" [imitates chopping motions] Soon as you walk in they're, like, "Good morning, how are you? Okay, goodbye!" You ever seen them unloading the delivery van, the freezer lorry? They get out a side of cow. Where's the other side? Is there, like, a cow still grazing in a field with a fucking side missing?"

"[About doctors] And they say, they always say the same thing. They say "Your appointment is at four," and it's never at four! You go down there at four and you have to wait in that waiting room with all the coughers for another bloody hour. You know when that doctor comes out at five, and he'll say, "I'll see you now." "No, you fuckin' won't! I've got a few more posters to read yet! Sit the fuck down!""