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Song Quotes by Tom Verlaine

17 Song quotes by Tom Verlaine

All Song quotes Tom Verlaine’s page

Tom Verlaine’s reflections on songs weave together the restless energy of a punk poet with a love for melody. In these seventeen snippets you’ll feel his sharp eye for lyrical nuance and the way he frames music as both a personal pulse and a cultural echo.

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I don't see us as a big media gimmick band. We don't have a cultivated appearance or anything like Kiss.

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You have to have that organizational principle behind the song.

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I grew up taking piano lessons and liking Wagner when I was in second grade.

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When somebody turned me on to a Coltrane record around seventh grade, I took up saxophone.

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Practice? I never practice. I just write songs and take solos.

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You can't get so interested in just making sounds. The point of it all is some kind of expression.

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The song Venus de Milo, the whole subject of it is Love is a drug.

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I always hated jazz guitar. I loved jazz saxophone but I hated jazz guitar. If I would buy an organ trio record…

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The whole reputation of being a rock guitar player, I could really care less about it. Still, when I hear new groups…

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Style to me is incidental. The British are very adept at creating it for its own sake, but the best style is…

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With my records, it's just a matter of trying to create something fresh for myself in a very finite context, which is…

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I always like junkyards. All this metal piled up - they're filled with pathos, those places. Much more pathos than most of…

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I recently realized that Television has influenced a lot of English bands. Echo and the Bunnymen, U2, Teardrop Explodes - it's obvious…

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I've seen a lot of people getting into Jazzmasters because of me, and, well, people don't know what they're in for. I…

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I don't want any production credit. I think producers are overrated. They're for people who, first of all, don't know anything about…

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People ask me this a lot, what a song's about… I do think analyzing a song can be interesting, although it doesn't…

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I have a real soft spot for flying saucer songs and Frenkenstein songs. When I was a kid the first record I…

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More by Tom Verlaine

My non-career. My excuse for a career? Honestly, I never think about the word 'career.' I've had managers, the minute they say it to…

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I like thinking of myself as invisible. I find it a very advantageous way to live.

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I'm not even sure who my audience is.

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Johnny Jewel is how people were maybe two hundred years ago. Back then, when people got up in the morning, they knew what they…

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Everybody's out trying to be commercial. I'm not trying to be anything, really.

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I don't want any production credit. I think producers are overrated. They're for people who, first of all, don't know anything about music or…

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I just don't like people coming up to me and saying something. It immediately makes you become insincere. There is no way you can…

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I'd never assume an audience was anything but totally receptive and perfect. Seriously, it seems to me that's the only circumstance you can work…

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I've got a quote for you, a good quote to describe Television...In madness there is order.

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I told somebody in Europe I was 43. I never tell my true age. It's ridiculous that people ask. The press doesn't deserve anything…

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I don't think anybody thinks about their past much, unless they're in a mental institution.

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All the Frank O'Hara types seem to have very little sound stuff going... it's so chatty or something.

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It's like first grade where you make all your mistakes and people see it and yet some people see that there's something there that's…

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Emily Dickinson has great sound and sense.

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I always hated jazz guitar. I loved jazz saxophone but I hated jazz guitar. If I would buy an organ trio record I would…

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