Jon Landau famous quotes

One gets the impression that Elvis Presley does what his business advisors think will be most profitable. My advice to them: Put Elvis Presley in the studio with a bunch of good, contemporary rockers, lock the studio up, and tell him he can't come out until he's done made an album that rocks from beginning to end.
-- Jon Landau

#Thinking #Rocks #Advice

Bob Dylan may be the Charlie Chaplin of rock n' roll. Both men are regarded as geniuses by their entire audience. Both were proclaimed revolutionaries for their early work and subjected to exhaustive attack when later works were thought to be inferior. Both developed their art without so much as a nodding glance toward their peers.
-- Jon Landau

#Art #Men #Rocks

Bob Dylan was the source of pop music's unpredictability in the Sixties. Never as big a record-seller as commonly imagined, his importance was first aesthetic and social, and then as an influence.
-- Jon Landau

#Records #Bob #Firsts

Carole King's second album, 'Tapestry,' has fulfilled the promise of her first and confirmed the fact that she is one of the most creative figures in all of pop music. It is an album of surpassing personal-intimacy and musical accomplishment and a work infused with a sense of artistic purpose. It is also easy to listen to and easy to enjoy.
-- Jon Landau

#Kings #Accomplishment #Creative

'Dance to the Music' was just Sly Stone being his natural crazy self right from the beginning. The man was an original and his first AM hit was nothing if it wasn't the example per excellence of the Sly Stone music machine.
-- Jon Landau

#Crazy #Men #Self

Elton John can be a master of the sleight of hand. The arrangements make it seem like there are substantial melodies underneath the tracks - but almost nothing demands repeated listenings. Similarly, he always sounds like he's singing up a storm, but his voice glosses over the material, reducing most things to an uninteresting sameness.
-- Jon Landau

#Hands #Voice #Track

It is by now beyond question that Elton John is a competent and classy entertainer. Few people who have achieved his popularity have succeeded in maintaining his standards for performance and professionalism.
-- Jon Landau

#People #Maintaining #Professionalism

James Taylor is the kind of person I always thought the word 'folksinger' referred to. He writes and sings songs that are reflections of his own life, and performs in them in his own style. All of his performances are marked by an eloquent simplicity.
-- Jon Landau

#Song #Writing #Reflection

'Sing It Again Rod' touches all the solo bases since Stewart's departure from the Jeff Beck Band, wherein he cut his teeth on American audiences for $75 a week plus expenses, and wisely ignores his generally inferior work with the Faces.
-- Jon Landau

#Cutting #Departure #Faces

Sly Stone doesn't make good albums: only good records. His style is so infinite and revolves around so many crucial aspects that it has only come together perfectly on a handful of his singles.
-- Jon Landau

#Style #Together #Albums

The Beatles never sounded intimidated by their idols. They never interpreted old rock; they simply played it as well and as joyfully as they knew how. On 'Rock 'n' Roll,' John Lennon does nothing but interpret old rock.
-- Jon Landau

#Rocks #Idols #Doe

The Faces do not, as some have recently alleged, play badly. They are more than competent, especially at creating a mid-Sixties Rolling Stones-styled groove, as their excellent version of 'Memphis' proves.
-- Jon Landau

#Creating #Play #Faces

The Rolling Stones are violence. Their music penetrates the raw nerve endings of their listeners and finds its way into the groove marked 'release of frustration.'
-- Jon Landau

#Frustration #Way #Violence

The title song of David Bowie's 'Young Americans' is one of his handful of classics, a bizarre mixture of social comment, run-on lyric style, English pop and American soul.
-- Jon Landau

#Running #Song #Soul

There were many stars in Motown's firmament - among them, Stevie, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Martha Reeves and Diana Ross - but I happen to have loved the Four Tops most of all.
-- Jon Landau

#Stars #Four #Diana

Bob Dylan has always sealed his decisions with the unexplainable. His motives for withholding the release of the magnificent 'Basement Tapes' will be as forever obscure as Brian Wilson's reasons for the destruction of the tapes for 'Smile.'
-- Jon Landau

#Decision #Forever #Bob

'Band on the Run' is a carefully composed, intricately designed personal statement that will make it impossible for anyone to classify Paul McCartney as a mere stylist again.
-- Jon Landau

#Running #Band #Stylist

Atlantic's Jerry Wexler believes first-rate records are made by first-rate voices. He certainly has worked with enough of them: Clyde McPhatter, Joe Turner, La Vern Baker, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin.
-- Jon Landau

#Believe #Voice #Records

The modern recording studio, with its well-trained engineers, 24-track machines and shiny new recording consoles, encourages the artist to get involved with sound. And there have always been artists who could make the equipment serve their needs in a highly personal way - I would single out the Beatles, Phil Spector, the Beach Boys and Thom Bell.
-- Jon Landau

#Beach #Boys #Artist

'Call Me' is not an exceptional Al Green album, but it is as solid as a rock at its center.
-- Jon Landau

#Rocks #Albums #Green

I saw rock n' roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.
-- Jon Landau

#Rocks #Names #Saws

In the end, the sign of Aretha Franklin's artistry is that she always leaves her mark - first, on the music, then on us.
-- Jon Landau

#Firsts #Franklin #Ends

It didn't matter that Charlie Chaplin may not have been a great director or a great anything else. He made great movies.
-- Jon Landau

#Directors #May #Matter

'Let's Get It On' is a classic Motown single, endlessly repeatable and always enjoyable.
-- Jon Landau

#Classic #Motown #Enjoyable

My ambition was to be a record producer, and I had started doing that in the late '60s with my work with the MC5 and my friend Livingston Taylor.
-- Jon Landau

#Ambition #Records #Producers

Ringo Starr may not have much of a voice, but when he sang a song on a Beatle album, it had its own special charm.
-- Jon Landau

#Song #Voice #Special

The Beatles production is often so 'perfect' that it sounds computerized. 'Sgt. Pepper' really does sound like it took four months to make.
-- Jon Landau

#Sgt Pepper #Perfect #Peppers

The early Bob Dylan was compulsively drawn to the conflict between stability and the search for immortality.
-- Jon Landau

#Bob #Conflict #Immortality

There is absolutely no doubt that the extraordinary Donna Summer belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
-- Jon Landau

#Summer #Rocks #Rock And Roll

While the Beatles always had George Martin around to clean up their act, the Rolling Stones had Andrew Loog Oldham to coarsen theirs.
-- Jon Landau

#Rolling #Stones #Rolling Stones

Aretha Franklin's 'Let Me in Your Life' is one of the few recent R&B albums that places the emphasis entirely and deservedly on a voice. Many R&B producers have been making records on which the singer is outshined by the song, the arrangement and the sound.
-- Jon Landau

#Song #Voice #Singers

As a performing group, the Beatles began by playing old rock favorites, for dancing, to tough audiences in Liverpool and Hamburg. When they began writing seriously, they discovered that they couldn't compose in the early American rock tradition.
-- Jon Landau

#Writing #Rocks #Dancing

To her audience, Janis Joplin has remained a symbol, artifact and reminder of late Sixties youth culture. Her popularity never derived from her musical ability, but from her capacity to link her fantasies of freedom and immortality with ours.
-- Jon Landau

#Musical #Links #Culture