Music Quotes

Something like Bohemian Rhapsody didn't just come out of thin air. I did a bit of research, although it was tongue-in-cheek and it was mock-opera. Why not? I certainly wasn't saying I was an opera fanatic and I knew everything about it.

I don't want to keep playing the same formula over and over again, otherwise you just go insane. I don't want to become stale. I want to be creative.

People are used to hard rock, energy music from Queen, yet with ['Killer Queen'] you almost expect Noel Coward to sing it. It's one of those bowler hat, black suspender belt numbers -- not that Coward would wear that.

We're fussy and finicky and have very high standards. If a song can't be done properly, we'd rather it isn't done at all.

The whole band is very particular. We don't go in for half measures and I'm very hard with myself. There're no compromises. If I thought a song wasn't quite right, I'd discard it. I'm very intricate and delicate.

We tend to work well under pressure. But do we row? Oh my dear, we're the bitchiest band on earth. You'll have to spend a couple of days with us. We're at each other's THROATS. But if we didn't disagree, we'd just be yes-men, and we do get the cream in the end.

You're headed for disaster cos you never read the signs. Too much love will kill you every time.

I actually felt sorry for Liverpool bands like Bunnymen and Wah!, having this immense pressure of following the Beatles. I suppose I responded to that challenge by being nothing like them. I carved my own thing.

Allowing valuable sound recordings to pass into the public domain does not create a public asset: it represents a massive destruction of U.K. wealth and a significant loss to the U.K. taxpayer.

For some, music is a limitless source of cheap content, just waiting to be exploited.

Money's Too Tight to Mention' was about as big an anti-Thatcherite message as you can get in pop music. There was a vast swath of the British media at that time that were rabid Thatcherites; do you think they are going to take kindly to me? Then I got hit by the left, because we were too popular.

I'm from the punk generation, but I make romantic, soft soul music. I like the bizarre disconnect of that but, clearly, some people don't.

At art school, a teacher said: 'The best paintings are when you get lost in a piece of work and start painting in a stream of consciousness.' I wanted to do music, not art, so started writing lyrics that way. The first song I wrote was called 'Ice Cream and Wafers.' The next was 'Holding Back the Years.'

I just want to write songs in my little corner. And I still love music, I've not been worn down by cynicism.

My dad knew I was mad about music. While he worked as a barber he would hear songs on the radio and we'd have endless discussions about them. So I got my first record player when I was 11 years old.

I feel enormously privileged to be part of the generation that witnessed the magic of the Beatles first hand, and I think 'A Hard Day's Night' connected with my four-year-old self because it was the whole package: an album and a movie.

I feel a bit like the antichrist as I had the bulk of my success in the 80s and I hate 80s music.

Nothing had the chance to be good nothing ever could.

The truth is there was a golden era in music from 1962 to 1978 - after that it all went a bit tits up. I blame the fucking drum machine and the fucking shoulder pads of the 1980s.

We would never have gained the attention without a major label throughout the world initially. I just got tired of them taking all the money.