Quote

I never played music, but it's an important thing ... the studying, the inspiration.

I went to college on a classical piano scholarship. My grandmother made me practice one full hour a day. Every day. Man. I thought all she wanted was for me not to have any fun. Next thing you know, you have a career in music. Now, not everybody's going to go on and be Mozart or Michael Jackson. But music makes you smarter.

The advice I am giving always to all my students is above all to study the music profoundly... music is like the ocean, and the instruments are little or bigger islands, very beautiful for the flowers and trees.

The thing about music is it's not an obscure pursuit, it's a very natural thing for human beings to do. Once you put in the effort, the learning curve is very fast.

Playing music is a lifetime's work. And if you want to carry on with it, you have to try to better yourself. You have to see where the music can take you.

I hadn't played any music since freshman year of college, more than thirty years ago, so I had to relearn everything. I started writing songs. Some were dance and trance songs (I listen to them a lot while I'm writing), and some were love songs, because that after all is what music is about - dancing and trancing and love and love's setbacks.

I've been studying on my own. I'm not really trained. I went to school for about a year and a half. I never really studied music, but, I mean, I did. I studied for two years, maybe.

I still picture myself as a student of the music. I'm always trying to learn new things. Music is just what makes me tick.

I still have a lot to learn. I'm concentrating on learning a lot more about music.

In a way, I'm lucky that I was never classically trained and never went to a music college. I'm just from a normal working class family and happened to get obsessed with music as a teenager.