Paul Zollo famous quotes

03-12-2025

Any quick analysis of a Beatles tune or a Cole Porter tune will reveal often simple but unexpected chords, chords that chromatically shift between keys, or between major and minor.
-- Paul Zollo

#Writing #Simple #Keys
Songwriting becomes a conscious attempt to delve into the unconscious. Even those writers who scoff at the concept of a spiritual source for their songs admit that the phenomenon of having them simply arrive feels magical.
-- Paul Zollo

#Spiritual #Song #Writing
Asked if he knew how important Stardust would be, Mitchell Parish said he did have a gut feeling that this was a momentous one. But had no idea it would become a standard. You don't sit down and write a standard, he explained. A standard evolves.
-- Paul Zollo

#Writing #Ideas #Feelings
Bill Monroe spoke of bringing 'ancient tones' into his music with echoes of British and Irish fiddle and bagpipe music, while also delving deeply into American blues, gospel, folk hymnody, and hill country dance music. To that gumbo, he added the invigorating rhythms and harmonies of hot jazz. It was a new kind of American music, named in honor of his band The Blue Grass Boys to be known, simply, as bluegrass.
-- Paul Zollo

#Music #Country #Boys
Paul Simon once said that a songwriter's supreme challenge was being complex and simple at the same time-writing songs with lasting depth that are also simple enough to be memorable. Jimmy Van Heusen was a master at this kind of song. His music was complex, with deeply rich chord changes any jazzman can embrace, but also possessed catchy, crystalline melodies of exceeding sing-ability. His songs were meant to be sung, not just listened to, and they were sung by the best, with Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby at the top of that list.
-- Paul Zollo

#Song #Memorable #Writing
Raksin worked for Alfred Hitchcock, about whom one of the most famous Raksin anecdotes was spoken. The legendary director declared he wanted no music at all for the oceanic Lifeboat, because he felt audiences would wonder where the music was coming from in the middle of the sea. Raksin said, Ask Hitch where the cameras are coming from.
-- Paul Zollo

#Writing #Sea #Anecdotes
Heartfelt, inspired songwritingwith a delivery both biting and assured.
-- Paul Zollo

#Heartfelt #Biting #Inspired

Back in the days when American billboard advertising was in flower [said Hemingway], there were two slogans that I always rated above all others: the old Cremo Cigar ad that proclaimed, Spit Is a Horrid Word-but Worse on the end of Your Cigar, and Drink Schlitz in Brown Bottles and Avoid that Skunk Taste. You don't get creative writing like that any more.
If the first requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite, the second is to put in your apprenticeship as a feeder when you have enough money to pay the check but not enough to produce indifference of the total.
I believe it was the great ogre philosopher Gary who observed that complexity is, generally speaking, an illusion of conscious desire. All things exist in as simple a form as necessity dictates. When a thing is labeled 'complex,' that's just a roundabout way of saying you're not observant enough to understand it.
Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.
It must be a balance in everything we do, not too much of everything, keep it simple, not complicated.
A successful film is a good film, and a non-successful film is a bad film. It's as simple as that.
It struck me that our history is contained in the home we live in, that we are shaped by the ability of these simple structures to resist being defiled
In Chekhov, when people leave, a carriage is taking them away forever. The stakes are so high just for someone to make a simple exit. And now we have all this access to public transportation, automobiles and jets and the Internet; we're so easily distracted, but the world is still designed to destroy you. It just happens quicker and faster now.
The only people who have control over their careers are the ones you see on the covers of magazines. Everyone else is just plodding along making a living. The key is not to live over your means and overdo it.
I've always believed it's important to make the invisible visible. And valuing that which has been taken for granted is something that I've always instinctually known is the key to the kind of society I want to live in and raise my children in.

Paul Zollo famous quotes

You may also like: