The problem for me still today is that I write purely with one dramatic structure and that is the rite of passage. I'm not really skilled in any other. Rock and roll itself can be described as music to accompany the rite of passage.

I think that a song when it works never mind a piece of long form music even a song is something that speaks to itself but has a language all of its own ideally.

I got interested in the idea of music that could make itself in a sense in the mid 1960s really when I first heard composers like Terry Riley and when I first started playing with tape recorders.

Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very very rich and complex and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.

When people in stadiums do the Wave it's the group-mind collective organism spontaneously organizing itself to express an emotion pass time and reflect the joy of seeing the rhythms of many as one a visual rhyming or music in which everyone senses where the motion is going.

Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So it's like just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that's really the only unique situation that's going to be left.

Why do musicians give so much time to charitable causes? The most humanitarian cause that we can give our time to is the creation and performance of music itself.

Those who have virtue always in their mouths and neglect it in practice are like a harp which emits a sound pleasing to others while itself is insensible of the music.

The scarcity of the music not only makes the music itself enjoyable but it also gives the collector a strange sense of superiority.

I believe that music is a force in itself. It is there and it needs an outlet a medium. In a way we are just the medium.