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I wanted to resign from the planet, not just music. It stopped being fun with success. Money got in the way. Everybody got greedy, including me. Fear set in. I got miserable when I became a commodity.

Artie Shaw

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Artie Shaw
Age: 94 †
Born: 1910
Born: May 23
Died: 2004
Died: December 29
Bandleader
Clarinetist
Composer
Conductor
Film Actor
Jazz Musician
Music Arranger
Saxophonist
Writer
New York City
New York
Arthur Jacob Arshawsky
Everybody
Stopped
Success
Miserable
Fear
Planet
Money
Including
Music
Planets
Wanted
Fame
Resign
Way
Became
Greedy
Fun
Commodity

More quotes by Artie Shaw

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I was really running a music school back then, because my band wasn't making any money. I keep talking about money, because most people don't understand the part of money in running a band.
Artie Shaw
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People ask what those women saw in me. Let's face it, I wasn't a bad-looking stud. But that's not it. It's the music it's standing up there under the lights. A lot of women just flip looks have nothing to do with it. You call Mick Jagger good-looking?
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An audience is in many respects no more than a mob under loose control.
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An artist should write for himself & not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away.
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The distance between me and Benny [Goodman], was that I was trying to play a musical thing, and Benny was trying to swing. Benny had great fingers I'd never deny that. But listen to our two versions of 'Star Dust.' I was playing he was swinging.
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I like the music. I love it & live it in fact. But for me the business part of music just plain stinks.
Artie Shaw
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I think that band [Glenn Miller] was the beginning of the end. It was a mechanized version of what they called jazz music. I still can't stand to listen to it.
Artie Shaw
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An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself.
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If you don’t see the wonder in the most ordinary phenomenon, you’re not going to resonate very much.
Artie Shaw
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I'm not comfortable with categories, and I distrust most definitions. The word 'definition' is based on the word 'finite,' which would seem to indicate that once we've defined something, we don't need to think about it anymore.
Artie Shaw
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You run into a party and [a] woman comes up to you. She's the most beautiful creature you ever saw - Ava Gardner - and says, I like you and why don't we get together? What are you going to say, No? You'd have to be an idiot. She was an incredible creature.
Artie Shaw
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The bandleader is a musician trying to sell a mass commodity and in order to do so successfully he must accommodate himself to mass standards. Unless he can do this comfortably, sooner or later he is sunk.
Artie Shaw
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When I first met Benny Goodman he wouldn't talk about anything but clarinets, mouthpieces, reeds, etc. When I tried to change the subject, he said 'But that's what we have in common. We both play clarinet.' I said, 'No, Benny, that's where we're different. You play clarinet, I play music.'
Artie Shaw
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There's such a cynicism about the phrase 'I laughed all the way to the bank.' It's as though money is what you're doing, rather than playing music. If you're playing a money game, why not get into banking?
Artie Shaw
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Somebody asked me once, 'Do you think that swing will ever come back?' And I said, 'Do you think the 1938 Ford will ever come back?'
Artie Shaw
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I can't understand guys who just have to have your autograph. What do you do when you get home, take it out & look at it?
Artie Shaw
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You have no idea of the women I didn't marry.
Artie Shaw
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If you wanna dance, a windshield wiper'll do it-all you need is a beat.
Artie Shaw
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Listening to Benny [Goodman] talk about the clarinet was like listening to a surgeon get hung up on a scalpel.
Artie Shaw
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I did all you can do with a clarinet. Any more would have been less.
Artie Shaw