Music Quotes

People ask me how I make music. I tell them I just step into it. It's like stepping into a river and joining the flow. Every moment in the river has its song.

I was a veteran, before I was a teenager.

I wake up from dreams and go, 'Wow, put this down on paper'. The whole thing is strange. You hear the words, everything is right there in front of your face.

Each song is a child I nourish and give my love to. But even if you have never written a song, your life is a song. How can it not be?

I hate labels because it should be just music. I don't see anything wrong with disco. Call it anything. It's music.

I always enjoyed the feeling of being onstage - the magic that comes. When I hit the stage it's like all of a sudden a magic from somewhere just comes and the spirit just hits you and you just lose control of yourself.

I own half of Sony's Publishing. I'm leaving them, and they're very angry at me, because I just did good business, you know.

I said if you're thinkin' of being my brother, it don't matter if you're black or white.

The lyrics, the strings, the chords, everything comes at the moment like a gift that is put right into your head and that's how I hear it.

Have you seen my childhood? I'm searching for the world that I came from cause I've been looking around in the lost and found of my heart.

I wrote a song called Dirty Diana. It was not about Lady Diana. It was about a certain kind of girls that hang around concerts or clubs, you know, they call them groupies.

When Paul first sang 'Hey Jude' to me-or played me the little tape he'd made of it-I took it very personally. 'Ah, it's me!' I said. 'It's me.' He says, 'No, it's me.' I said, 'Check, we're going through the same bit.' So we all are. Whoever is going through that bit with us is going through it; that's the groove.

My defenses were so great. The cocky rock-and-roll hero who knows all the answers was actually a terrified guy who didn't know how to cry. Simple.

That was a great period. We were like kings of the jungle then, and we were very close to the Stones.... I spent a lot of time with them, and it was great.

Paul [McCartney] and I made a deal when we were 15. There was never a legal deal between us, just a deal we made when we decided to write together that we put both our names on it, no matter what.

We're not Beatles to each other, you know. It's a joke to us. If we're going out the door of the hotel, we say, 'Right! Beatle John! Beatle George now! Come on, let's go!' We don't put on a false front or anything.

We were four guys... I met Paul, and said, 'You want to join me band?' Then George joined and then Ringo joined. We were just a band that made it very, very, big, that's all. Our best work was never recorded.

After Brian [Epstein] died, we collapsed. Paul took over and supposedly led us. But what is leading us, when we went round in circles? We broke up then. That was the disintegration.

That is one of the main reasons the Beatles ended. I can't speak for George, but I pretty damn well know we got fed up of being sidemen for Paul.

I meant it, it's real; the lyric is as good now as it was then. It's no different. And it makes me feel secure to know that I was that sensible, or whatever-not sensible, aware of myself... It was just me singing 'Help' and I meant it.