Certain kinds of people require adventure in their lives, and therefore require a bit of adventure in their music.
— Bob Weir
For me, I think the only danger is being too much in love with guitar playing. The music is the most important thing, and the guitar is only the instrument.
— Jerry Garcia
We gotta start teaching our daughters to be somebodies instead of somebody’s.
— Kifah Shah (via jimstarks)
(via johnbelushi)
I got to play with these orchestras recently, at Carnegie Hall. One of the best musical experiences of my life. You go in and there are all the walls covered in photos of great conductors. A picture of Mark Twain standing on the stage. This is what you walk by before you go onstage, in case anyone ever wants to try and have an ego in that room. But so I get a two-hour rehearsal with these musicians, with the New York Philharmonic—maybe the top orchestra in the world—and every single musician on the stage is so far beyond anyone I’ve ever played with. All ninety of them. They were the top in their school and then the top at Juilliard and now they’re playing second cello. And the humility is as high as the musicianship. Let’s say you’re playing a Beethoven piece in a room where the same piece was played one hundred years ago. They’re sitting in the same chairs, wearing the same shoes and suits, playing instruments that are one hundred years old, playing the same sounds with the best conductor of their time, who is standing under photos of twenty of the greatest conductors. And when the music started playing, I had this idea that the music was coming through this little channel—for lack of a better word—for years and years. Musicians come and go and they’re stewards of the music for a brief period of time. But once the music plays—it’s really between Beethoven and the listener at that point. The musicians are there to get their goddamn hands off of it. All that training! Thousands of hours! Sight-reading every day! All so they can get the hell out of the way because nobody gives a crap about them at all. The less you notice them, the better it sounds. I mean, it was the highest level of art in music that I’d ever seen, and it was performed by people who had spent countless hours of work just to be invisible.
— Trey Anastasio
I feel like musicians now a days aren’t really trying…its kinda like how the guy at subway isn’t thinking “Oh, I wanna make this kid the greatest fucking sub in the universe” no, he just wants to get through the day and then get paid. These albums now a days don’t have the blood sweat tears and attitude as it did 10-20 years ago
— Henry Rollins (via thesilentbassist)
(via playdontworry)
“We need to remember that flaws are good. If you’re boobs aren’t perfect than they’re your boobs. You don’t need to get a boob job. And if you’re nose isn’t perfect, that’s part of your character. The most beautiful women in the world to me are the ones who are like perfect and then they smile and then they buck teeth or they’re perfect and their nose is big, or whatever. Those are the little things that make people more beautiful and more interesting to me. I think music needs to be that way.”
Taylor Hawkins.
Taylor I’m crying
I fucking love you
(via chriswhorenell)
I remember being shocked one day when John started worrying about how people would remember him when he was gone. It was an incredibly vulnerable thing for him to come out with. I said to him then, “They’ll remember you as a fucking genius, because that’s what you are. But, you won’t give a shit because you’ll be up there, flying across the universe.’
— Paul McCartney (via lilacstrandsofbohemia)
(via lovely-moonchild)
Why are we embarrassed by silence? What comfort do we find in all the noise?
— Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie (via jimstarks)
(via johnbelushi)
Well, we were The Hawks. And it was right in the middle of that whole psychedelia. Chocolate Subway, Marshmallow Overcoat. Those kind of names, you know? We started out with The Crackers. We tried to call ourselves The Honkies. Everybody kind of backed off from that. It was too straight. So we decided just to call ourselves The Band.
— Richard Manuel