dig interview (2004)
Context: Obviously the people that I admired, like the Beatles, were really into rock'n'roll, but it was already a little past rock'n'roll when I started listening and making my own choices about music. I've been lucky to listen to lots of different types of music.
Elvis Costello: Quotes about music
Elvis Costello is English singer-songwriter. Explore interesting quotes on music.
Elvis Costello:
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“My sense of history in music is much greater than a lot of people's.”
dig interview (2004)
Context: My sense of history in music is much greater than a lot of people's. I listen a lot further back in the whole history of music. It's not just pop music of the last 20, 30, 40, 50 years. I'm listening to stuff from hundreds of years ago as well, because you can learn from everything.
dig interview (2004)
Context: I don't feel any form of music is beyond me in the sense of that I don't understand it or I don't have some love for some part of it. And if there's something in it that I can respond to, then there's something that I might be able to use as a composer. There are records of mine that have had smaller audiences and have provoked really drastic responses from people — particularly from critics — who maybe don't have quite enough time to live with the record or accept that a piece has its own integrity.
“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture — it's a really stupid thing to want to do.”
This has commonly been paraphrased "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture." More info at "Alan P. Scott : Talking about music..." http://home.pacifier.com/~ascott/they/tamildaa.htm Also, Costello has denied http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/11/08/writing-about-music/ having coined this, in an interview in Q magazine, tentatively attributing the quote instead to Martin Mull.
Misattributed
dig interview (2004)
Musician (March 1986)
Warning label on Almost Blue (1981)