David Bowie on Rock 'n' Roll

Rock has always been the devil’s music. You can’t convince me that it isn’t.

[...]

I honestly believe everything that I’ve said. I believe that rock & roll is dangerous. It could well bring about a very evil feeling in the West. [...] And that’s where I see it [Rock 'n' Roll] heading, bringing about the dark era. [...] I feel that we’re only heralding something even darker than ourselves. [...]

David Bowie quoted in Rolling Stone, no. 206 (February 12, 1976), p. 83.
<http://www.theuncool.com/journalism/rs206-david-bowie/>

Keith Richards on Inspiration in Song Writing

"Songs -- yeah. People think you're a songwriter, they think you wrote it, it's all yours, you are totally responsible for it. Really, you are just a medium, you just develop a facility for recognizing and picking up things and you just have to be ready to be there -- like being at a seance; they just plop out of the air. Whole songs just come to you, you don't write it. Songs come to me en masse. I didn't do anything except to happen to have been awake when it arrived."

Keith Richards of the ROLLING STONES quoted in Rolling Stone, no. 238 (May 5, 1977), p. 55.

<http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/keith-richards-meets-the-mounties-and-faces-the-music-20121017>

Michael Jackson Dreamed Thriller into Existence

Just how it [Thriller] all came about is still a mystery to him – as is the creative process itself.

"I wake up from dreams and go, 'Wow, put this down on paper,'" he says. "The whole thing is strange. You hear the words, everything is right there in front of your face. And you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry, I just didn't write this. It's there already.' That's why I hate to take credit for the songs I've written. I feel that somewhere, someplace, it's been done and I'm just a courier bringing it into the world. I really believe that. I love what I do. I'm happy at what I do. It's escapism."

Michael Jackson quoted in Rolling Stone, no. 389 (February 17, 1983), p. 58.

<http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/michael-jackson-life-as-a-man-in-the-magical-kingdom-19830217>

Chuck Berry: "...when you sin, go ahead and sin."

But if you like all music, then variety adds to the performance. We'd do "Day-O" ["Banana Boat Song"] by Harry Belafonte, "Jamaica Farewell," then jump back with some Muddy, then some sweet Nat. No spirituals, though. I always say, when you sin, go ahead and sin. When you ask forgiveness [laughs], you know-keep it separate!

Doerschuk, Robert L., ed., Playing from the Heart: Great Musicians Talk About Their Craft, San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2002, p. 7.

The Beach Boys' Witchcraft Music?

We were all messed up on drugs. We were doing witchcraft, trying to make witchcraft music.

Kent, Nick, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music, Boston: Da Capo Press, 2002, p. 43.

Little Richard on Rock

My true belief about Rock ‘n’ Roll—and there have been a lot of phrases attributed to me over the years—is this: I believe this kind of music is demonic. I have seen the rock groups and the punk-rock people in this country. And some of their lyrics is demonic. They talk against God. A lot of the beats in music today are taken from voodoo, from the voodoo drums. If you study music in rhythms, like I have, you'll see that is true.

White, Charles, The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock, updated ed., Boston: Da Capo Press, p. 197.

I had forgotten all about God—going from town to town, city to city, and from country to country, not knowing that I was directed and commanded by another power. The power of darkness. The power that you've heard so much about. The power that a lot of people don't believe exists. The power of the Devil. Satan.

White, Charles, The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock, updated ed., Boston: Da Capo Press, pp. 205-206.

Jimmy Page Being a Vehicle for Some Greater Force

"I know what my musical direction is now," he [Page] said at the end of 1973, "and at those times when I've hit it, it's just like I'm a vehicle for some greater force."

Davis, Stephen, Hammer of the Gods: the Led Zeppelin Saga, New York: Harper Entertainment, 2008, p. 211.

Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant and Automatic Writing

As for the lyrics [for 'Stairway to Heaven' of Led Zeppelin's fourth album], written entirely by Plant, 'Jimmy and I just sat by the fire, it was a remarkable setting,' he recalled years later. 'I was holding a pencil and paper, and for some reason I was in a very bad mood. Then all of a sudden my hand was writing out the words, "There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold/And she's buying a stairway to heaven . . ." I just sat there and looked at the words and then I almost leapt out of my seat.' [...]

[...]

More words would come the following day as the band worked their way bit by bit through the song's epic journey. [...] Page recalled how, 'As we were doing all that, Robert was writing down the lyrics. They just came to him really quickly. He said it was like someone was guiding his hand.'

Wall, Mick, When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led-Zeppelin, London: Orion Books, 2008, pp. 242-243.

He [Robert Plant] often remarked that he could feel his pen being pushed by some higher authority.

Davis, Stephen, Hammer of the Gods: the Led Zeppelin Saga, New York: Berkley Boulevard Books, 1997, p. 243.
<http://www.amazon.com/Hammer-Gods-Stephen-Davis/dp/0425182134>
Davis, Stephen, Hammer of the Gods: the Led Zeppelin Saga, New York: Harper Entertainment, 2008, p. 243.

Calling on the gods... Slay a few animals... At the crossroads

When I was back there in seminary school
There was a person there
Who put forth the proposition
That you can petition the Lord with prayer
Petition the lord with prayer
Petition the lord with prayer
You cannot petition the lord with prayer!

Can you give me sanctuary
I must find a place to hide
A place for me to hide

Can you find me soft asylum
I can't make it anymore
The Man is at the door [what man?]

[...]

There's only four ways to get unraveled
One is to sleep and the other is travel, da da
One is a bandit up in the hills
One is to love your neighbor 'till [sodomy?]
His wife gets home

[...]

All our lives we sweat and save
Building for a shallow grave
Must be something else we say
Somehow to defend this place
Everything must be this way
Everything must be this way, yeah

[...]

Out of sight!
The lights are getting brighter
The radio is moaning
Calling to the dogs [gods?]
There are still a few animals
Left out in the yard
[...]

[...]

We need someone or something new
Something else to get us through, yeah, c'mon

Callin' on the dogs [gods?]
Callin' on the dogs [gods?]
Oh, it's gettin' harder
Callin' on the dogs [gods?]
Callin' in the dogs [gods?]
Callin' all the dogs [gods?]
Callin' on the gods

You gotta meet me
Too late, baby
Slay a few animals
At the crossroads
Too late
All in the yard
[...]
By the crossroads
You gotta meet me
[...]
At the edge of town
[...]
Outskirts of the city
You and I
We need someone new
Somethin' new
Somethin' else to get us through
Better bring your gun
Better bring your gun
[...]

[...] 

  "The Soft Parade," The Doors, the soft parade.

  And he [Morrison] finally got there [the vocal theater and rhythmic tension of those first breakthrough records], at the very end of the album, in "The Soft Parade" [...] Morrison growls in ecstasy: "This is the best part of the trip!" And it is, a resolution of the fanfares and detours all over the rest of The Soft Parade, into that original pagan magic.

Fricke, David, the insert, the doors/the soft parade, Rhino Entertainment Company, 2007.

Producer Paul Rothchild was one [who believed Jim's accident story]: "As a child he was driving with his parents, and there was a truck full of Indians that had crashed and overturned. There was a medicine man dying at the side of the road, and Jim, this four- or five-year-old child vividly remembered a mystical experience when, as the shaman died, his spirit entered Jim's body. That was the pivotal event of his entire life. He always viewed himself as the shaman, having mystical powers and the ability to see through many facades to the truth. It was this power that drove him. This was the great force that pushed his life and took him out of the rigid, military environment of his youth and turned him into a seer."

Riordan, James and Jerry Prochnicky, Break on Through: The Life and Death of Jim Morrison, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1991, p. 193.

When Manzarek heard that Morrison wanted to call the band The Doors, he thought it was ridiculous until he remembered the Blake line. "At the time, we had been ingesting a lot of psychedelic chemicals," Manzarek remembers, "so the doors of perception were cleansed in our own minds, so we saw music as a vehicle to, in a sense, become proselytizers of a new religion, a religion of self, of each man as god. That was the original idea behind The Doors. Using music and Jim's brilliant lyrics."

Riordan, James and Jerry Prochnicky, Break on Through: The Life and Death of Jim Morrison, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1991, p. 74.

Jim Morrison later recounted what happened to him during this time: "I was living in this abandoned office building, sleeping on the roof. And all of a sudden I threw away most of my notebooks that I'd been keeping since high school and these songs just kept coming to me. It was a beautiful hot summer and I just started hearing songs. This kind of mythic concert that I heard . . . I thought I was going to be a writer or a sociologist, maybe write plays. I never went to concerts---one or two at most. I saw a few things on TV, but I had never been a part of it all. But I heard in my head a whole concert situation, with a band and singing and an audience---a large audience. Those first five or six songs I wrote, I was just taking notes at a fantastic rock concert that was going on inside my head. And once I had written the songs, I had to sing them."

Riordan, James and Jerry Prochnicky, Break on Through: The Life and Death of Jim Morrison, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1991, p. 72.