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" I used to sneak gospel tunes into my old records, just as kind of a personal thing. "

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" Country hillbilly music I love. Always have. "

" You have to be able to improvise and respond to what's going on around you. Then you might get a good piece of work done. "

" That's what records do: represent a compressed, heightened version of the sound. Because of the compression of the tubes and microphones and the wax, it's magic! "

" You can play as good as you want, but you have to sing from a place of living. "

" I like classical music. I especially like the French composers: Ravel in particular. Debussy. That's so soothing in a nervous world. "

" I like the idea that something happens to everybody who comes to L.A. - whether they are Mexican, Irish, black, or hillbillies. You come here, and you leave all your traditions behind. And since there's no traditions here, you just make one up. "

" Being the front guy is a hard job. "

" The '50s was the golden age of music all over the world for some crazy, 'X-File'-like reason I can't quite understand. "

" Back in the early '70s, when Susie and I were first married, we had a little house that we rented, and we used to have parties. People would come, and they wouldn't leave. I used to get so tired. I'd put on the Stanley Brothers, 'Songs for the Good People,' and the house would clear in five minutes. It was not liked; it was alien. It was weird. "

" I'm a man of peace. "

" I always have felt that most people don't have the first idea about what musicians, in the traditional sense - I don't mean in the modern media fake way, but traditionally - what they went through, what their lives were like. "

" If something grooves and you like the sound, then that's all you need. "

" Music creates complicity, and then you feel less isolated. "

" I've tended to look at my albums as research and development. I was just trying to get someplace new on each one. "

" American global economic imperialism is a fact. It's a known fact. It's a simple fact. "

" Santa Monica, where I have always lived, is not a town where you will find storefront Church of God in Christ churches. So, the whole idea of gospel quartet singing is something I never knew existed until I began to hear it on record. "

" When the real world intrudes on your musical fantasies, I get put out. "

" I think all the music I do, which ties together, as far as I'm concerned, is fun and entertaining. "

" I didn't want tunes that preach heaven: you know, life on Earth is bad and heaven is the only hope we have. I don't quite care for that. I mean, when people sing that stuff, it's good when they do it, but I didn't want to do it. "

" You go through these phases. That's how life is. Over the long term, you just can't do one thing. I saw that back in the Sixties when I was getting started. "

Getting Started

" On any given day, if I play the guitar, I can put myself somewhere. I always thought, 'This is the way you go.' It's like a magic carpet, see? "

" Film work is a job I like to do because I really love to solve problems. "

" I hate films. Films make me sick now, and if something makes me sick, I always back off. "

" I'm sort of an osmotic fellow. "

" I wanted to be a car pinstriper, but there was nobody to teach me how to do it. So I said, 'Music's good too. I'll do that maybe, since I can't work out how to do this pinstriping.' "

" I'm used to music as a tool, taking the various elements and then making something completely new out of them. And writing film music is the perfect opportunity to do that, because you can look at the film and then just let your imagination soar. "

" It all started back in '69 when I worked with Jack Nitzche on 'Performance.' That was my first experience of doing soundtracks, and I've enjoyed doing them ever since. "

" If it hadn't been for record people like Ralph Peer, the Chess brothers, and Alan Lomax, then life would've been unbelievably dull, and I would've been sacking groceries somewhere and probably, at this point, running a little 7-Eleven down by the airport. "

" R&B and all that stuff was always very spare and spontaneous. Nobody made those records under solid gold situations. It was just in and out, and you didn't labor over the thing. I like music like that. "

" After all is said and done and institutions fail, people still have some ability to care for each other. "