T Bone Burnett famous quotes

03-28-2025

We live in an age of music for people who don't like music. The record industry discovered some time ago that there aren't that many people who actually like music. For a lot of people, music's annoying, or at the very least they don't need it. They discovered if they could sell music to a lot of those people, they could sell a lot more records.
-- T Bone Burnett

#People #Age #Records
Still, records are documents of a period of time. Most records are documents of two or three years, and I just approached it as a record I was doing over a 20-year period of time.
-- T Bone Burnett

#Years #Two #Records
I think we in the Alpha Band, which was a strange group anyway, weren't dealing with any of these issues. They sneaked up on us and took us over, before we know what was going on.
-- T Bone Burnett

#Thinking #Issues #Band
I'm not stupid enough to want to be famous. But I would like to be able to earn a living playing music.
-- T Bone Burnett

#Stupid #Want #Able
I figured out early on what I wanted to do.
-- T Bone Burnett

#Wanted
I got out of high school, bought a recording studio and started operating it as an engineer and a producer.
-- T Bone Burnett

#School #High School #Producers
I love loud music. I listen loud, and that's part of how I've learned how to do this. Record softly and play back loud and a whole other thing happens.
-- T Bone Burnett

#Play #Records
I naturally wanted to be saved, so when I came home I told my mom I wanted to be confirmed. That's the way I related to it, being raised an Episcopalian. I went to Dallas and got confirmed.
-- T Bone Burnett

#Mom #Home #Way
I want to write songs and play them for people - live.
-- T Bone Burnett

#Song #Writing #Play
If it is true that we have a personal relationship with God, then that's enough for me.
-- T Bone Burnett

#Enough #Relationship With God
It's also ironic that in the old days of tape and tape hiss and vinyl records and surface noise, we were always trying to get records louder and louder to overcome that.
-- T Bone Burnett

#Ironic #Trying #Records
You know, the thing that struck me about Civil War music was how bloody it was; it was full of hatred. There was incredible vitriol in it.
-- T Bone Burnett

#War #Hippie #Hatred
In other words, I'd say the whole story of Bob Dylan is one man's search for God. The turns and the steps he takes to find God are his business. I think he went to a study group at the Vineyard, and it created a lot of excitement.
-- T Bone Burnett

#Men #Thinking #Vineyards
We live in an age lit by lightnin'; after the flash, we're blind again.
-- T Bone Burnett

#Age #Blind #Flash
When the arts are eliminated, children get bored and tired of school. When the arts are included, children's imaginations are allowed to run wild.
-- T Bone Burnett

#Music #Running #Art
Honesty is the most subversive of all disguises,
-- T Bone Burnett

#Honesty #Disguise
Everything around a writer, or musician in the record business, probably everything in all the United States or in all of western civilization, is about competition.
-- T Bone Burnett

#Civilization #Competition #Records
At different times in my life I met God from a different point of view.
-- T Bone Burnett

#Views #Different #Mets
My original idea was to produce and not make records myself.
-- T Bone Burnett

#Ideas #Records #Original Ideas
Listen, the story of the United States is this: One kid, without anything, walks out of his house, down the road, with nothing but a guitar and conquers the world. And we've done that again, and again, and again â€“ Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Rogers, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters.
-- T Bone Burnett

#Kids #Guitar #Water
Almost everything The Beatles did was great, and it's hard to improve on. They were our Bach. The way to get around it may be to keep it as simple as possible.
-- T Bone Burnett

#Simple #Way #May
I'm not going to get in to an argument with anyone about the relative merits of Judaism and Christianity, and what it means for a Jewish kid to be a Christian - I'm just not interested in that argument.
-- T Bone Burnett

#Christian #Mean #Kids
I've seen a study in the last year that digital sound actually induces stress in the listener.
-- T Bone Burnett

#Stress #Years #Lasts
The record business is dangerous to the health of bands and individuals, which is something I'm just now learning. But it's not dangerous in any of the ways people think; it's not that they try to make you compromise your art. That's not the problem.
-- T Bone Burnett

#Art #Thinking #People

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