Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" I used to have sort of mixed feelings about a producer whose only skills seemed to be going into the studio, schmoozing the artists and making them feel good. I can see now that in some cases, that's what you have to do because that's the only way you're going to get them to produce. "

Related Quotes:

" In a way, I created Utopia as a platform for me to become more of a guitar player and less of the kind of balladeer that people were taking me for. "

Todd Rundgren

Way

Guitar

Kind

" When I got out of high school, I was in a blues band. It was the kind of music I was interested in, and listening to, mostly because it was becoming a vehicle for a generation of guitarists - like Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. Mike Bloomfield. And that's what I wanted to be, principally: a guitar player. "

" So there was a way for you to get promoted and survive as an artist without worrying about AM radio hits. "

" My father was not really into popular music; I had to learn about that for myself. "

" It's hard for me to say that what I'm doing isn't even really music, because deep inside of me, what I want to do is much greater than music. "

Todd Rundgren

Want

Music

" When you come to a place like Kauai, you don't go for a high tech world. "

Todd Rundgren

High

" The New York Dolls did not think of themselves as punk rock. There was no such term at the time. They were just another band in what was called the New York scene. "

" I decided early on that I wanted to be Michael Bloomfield, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton - not George Harrison. "

" I got it into my head that I had somewhat neglected the guitar, and then I did a record called 'Arena,' and it was not a particularly bad record - it wasn't a bad record at all, but it was built around a certain concept, which is a guitar quartet, with a little bit of augmentation here and there. "

" It was always remarkable to me how ignorant the labels were of the listening habits of their own customers, and how obstinate they were in denying those habits and then trying to essentially alter those habits instead of retooling their business to adapt to them. "

" We bought property after Iniki in '92. I figured we'd never find better bargains. As it turned out, we didn't get a bargain, but we did find the spot we wanted to live on. It actually took a couple years to secure that spot. Then, after we moved, it took over 10 years to start construction on the house. It's still a work in progress. "

" When the Beatles first came out, you had to go to a certain amount of trouble to have long hair. You just couldn't have it immediately. Anything you can just go out and get - like platform shoes - is not going to inspire people as much as something they have to go through a little bit of hell to have. "

" I want to be known as a professional weirdo. There aren't many Salvador Dalis or Buckminster Fullers left. If I become popular enough, I can establish the next step for records. "

" I really consider myself fortunate to have been of age during the musical revolution that came in the form of the Beatles. People don't realize that previous to the Beatles, there really was no such thing as an album artist. People made singles. Then they would put a bunch of those singles together and call it an album. And that was it. "

" It's the only way that YOUR life is gonna have any value to you. If you're just living the same life that everybody else is living what's the point? "

" It's great if you can afford to carry a string section on the road with you, but most people are used to the idea of just a keyboard player creating those string sounds. "

" I don't know what the inspiration for most of songs really mean until I finish them. For the most part, I'm going for a visceral impression, and I write the words last. "

" Most people didn't have the bandwidth to download whole albums. And so it brought back this cherry picking idea that the audience would focus on certain songs and possibly be the impetus behind what eventually got on AM radio: the single or whatever. "

" There are some things that we know are just not as pleasant as the lies that we tell ourselves, and in that sense in order to endure existence everyone endures a certain amount of dishonesty in their everyday lives. "

" I don't use any real vintage hardware any longer. That's always been the object as far as gaining control of the studio environment, going back to when I built my first studio, Secret Sound, in New York City. The whole point was to not have to pay studio bills anymore and not be looking at the clock. "

" Celebrities are the fodder of much of the media business, so they're always interested in making you seem provocative when you're not, or trying to bring you some sort of embarrassment by revealing something you'd rather not have revealed. That's the downside of celebrity. "

" Most people outside of America won't get it. It's the Easter bunny. It's another lie and I don't understand why we had to invent this character. "

" If I have an opportunity to do something safe or something challenging, I'll often choose the latter. Sometimes, the objective is to submerge my viewpoint with the artist. "

" I didn't expect to become an artist. I was not comfortable going out on the road. "

" My guitar heroes are Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck and people like that - so I've tried to make an album of Robert Johnson covers that, well, while not totally faithful for blues purists, is faithful for people like me that grew up with the '60s and the electric blues-rock versions of Johnson's songs. "

" And so it's inescapable and people who proclaim scrupulous honesty can only proclaim that if they don't examine closely the things they believe. "

" People write me letters and say I should answer them. But I don't like to answer letters. I don't write letters. I've never written my mother one. "

" Once I go on stage, the atmosphere is totally theatrical. The greater the illusion, the greater the intensity of the excitement it creates. "

" Every once in a while, we have some sort of movement in music that everyone suddenly wants to work in, like grunge or rap or disco or some other musical phase, and then suddenly, that'll be the thing to do. "

" My very first records, I was very interested in how you get the particular quality you want out of it, and I began to learn about the engineering and aspects of production and things very early on. I got hands-on with the process and taught myself how to engineer, as opposed to just being a producer who asked the engineer to make it sound nice. "