influence
Notewise, whenever I read a passage that moves me, I transcribe it in my diary, hoping my fingers might learn what excellence feels like.
“By the Book,” New York Times, April 12, 2012.
I am very influenced by the people who influenced my influences, and I am influenced even more by the people who influenced them.
“Stepping Out of the Shadows With a Sunnier Sound,” by James C. McKinley Jr, The New York Times, April 1, 2012.
I think I get so in love with a band that I just end up pretty much copying them. And I hope that the originality can come from the fact that you’re in love with 1,000 bands and they’re all completely different. So that when you copy all of them at once, that’s how you create something new.
“Bombay Bicycle Club: From Many Sounds, One Band,” NPR, January 14, 2012.
What people don’t understand is that musicians swim backwards up the stream. You have what you like and then you want to see where it came from.
Marc Ribot interview with Bill Frisell, BOMB magazine, Issue 79, Spring 2002.
Quotation is something that happens a lot in the music world. Merle Haggard can mimic Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson perfectly. The Beatles, in “Back in the USSR,” mimic The Beach Boys. Quotation is a phrase that is used all the time in jazz solos. It happens a lot in old-time string band music too. One song is always using a line from another song to brace it. But then goes off on another tangent. Minstrels did it all the time. Weird takes on Shakespeare plays, stuff like that. It’s just done automatically.
“Bob Dylan in Conversation with John Elderfield,” Spring 2011.