"I had been inspired by an organ player named Earl Grant, who played organ and piano together. My mom took me to see him. So I went home, put my piano and organ together, too." - Billy Preston, born this day in 1946.
"If you're putting somebody down, you're doing it because you're just seeing a part of yourself that you don't like. That's all that is." - Van Morrison, wacko conspiracy theorist, who's been putting down everyone who believed the COVID pandemic was real, spawned this day in 1945.
"I burp like everyone else and I'm promiscuous. I have tried sex with both men and women. I found I liked it. My sexuality has never been a problem to me but I think it has been for other people." - Dusty Springfield
"If Jennifer Lopez could write songs like Fiona Apple's, she wouldn't have to spend so many hours at the gym." - Shirley Manson, born this day in 1966.
"If I'm onstage or not, I find the communal experience of a rock concert, or any music performance, achieves a kind of transcendence that I associate with spirituality. It's what I think people expect church to be like. Or just what I've always thought church should be. You lose yourself, and at the same time come to the realization or understanding that you're part of something bigger than yourself." - Jeff Tweedy
"We weren't put here to be miserable. We were put here to do the best we can, and we should take our energy and improve our state of being. Love is the most powerful energy there is." - Lenny Kravitz
"I've always enjoyed myself. Unhappy periods for me last about twenty minutes. I love to see people laugh and I love it more if I can make them laugh." - Keith Moon, born this day in 1946.
"I don't play a lot of fancy guitar. I don't want to play it. The kind of guitar I want to play is mean, mean licks." - John Lee Hooker, born this day in 1917.
"I certainly understand that we're all trying to make a living, but I'm not thinking about that when I'm making music. And if that's your sole motivation, it's going to reflect that narcissistic greed, and you're going to hear it in the music." - Aimee Mann
"Our look evolved from the fact that we bought thrift-store clothes. It wasn't like, 'Let's adopt a thrift-store aesthetic.' We just didn't have any money." - Fred Schneider
"I'm from the Bob Wills and the Little Richard school of music. Bob Wills did what the hell he thought, Little Richard did what he thought, and those were my big influences." - Buck Owens, born this day in 1929.
“Some of my early stuff was infected by the deadly disease of cynicism, which is a disease of the young, I think, When you’re young, it seems very clever to be cynical. But as you get older, hopefully, if you’re not completely stupid, you realize that you have to be a bit more positive, as a simple matter of survival." - Joe Jackson, born this day in 1954.
"The worst thing you can be is a musician. You shouldn't have too much respect for what gets the job done. It's a tool. It's a piece of equipment. That's the problem with musicians. They get too hung up on the wrong things." - Jim Reid
On this day in 1970, Janis Joplin bought a headstone for the grave of her greatest influence, Bessie Smith, at the Mount Lawn Cemetery in Philadelphia. Blues singer Smith died in 1937 after being refused admission to a whites only hospital.
"Every time you play, you have energy within you - universal energy. That's the energy that keeps everything together - the planets, the galaxies. Everything." - Airto Moreira, born this day in 1941.