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Serious music usually doesn't pay.

Elvis Costello

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Elvis Costello
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: August 25
Composer
Guitarist
Record Producer
Singer-Songwriter
London
England
Declan Patrick MacManus
Declan Patrick Aloysius MacManus
Declan MacManus
Music
Usually
Pay
Serious
Doesn

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Anything that has to travel all the way down from your cerebellum to your fingertips, there's a lot of things that can happen on the journey. Sometimes I'll listen to records, my own stuff, and I think god, the original idea for this was so much better than the mutation that we arrived at.
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Smokey Robinson writes the heartfelt songs, whereas it was my job to write the songs about weakness and failure in love.
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Some people can't physically hear things. A kid that listens to Metallica or something can't hear that, because he's filled himself up with this stuff, he physically can't hear a banjo or a harp or something.
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She said she was working for the ABC news, it was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use.
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You're drinking vintage Elvis Presley wine.
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And obviously, when I started out, I had a little bit more curiosity than some, and went seeking out the original artists, or in some cases searching up country music.
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The cost of living in sin would make a poor man out of Paul Getty.
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Now I just don't know who to tell to go to hell Who put the old devil in the distorted angel?
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I love you more than anything in this world. I don't expect that will last.
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I've never had any real concern about posterity. I hope some people will be sorry when I'm not here, but I'm not playing for that.
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I'm not going to get too sentimental, like those other sticker valentines, 'cause I don't know if you are loving some body. I only know it isn't mine.
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You must hold on to the sort of finger-painting aspect of music. That's something I learned, particularly from listening to Neil Young. Tom Waits is another one, because Tom's music is incredibly sophisticated and beautifully arranged, but he's using a toolbox that's unlike anybody else's.
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I've been lucky to listen to lots of different types of music.
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I can write orchestrations, but I can't sight-read music and play at the same time. I don't have enough facility.
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I mistrust these people in music industry who can be everybody. This is where technology dictates to them. I mistrust that, that in somehow the chips capture the soul of a player, that's patent nonsense.
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Elvis Presley and Puccini shall return.
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Don't start me talking, I could talk all night. My mind goes sleepwalking while I'm putting the world right.
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It's not crazy to want to have certain songs be developed harmonically and still want to make noise with the guitar. And you can have both.
Elvis Costello
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It's a dangerous game that comedy plays. Sometimes it tells you the truth sometimes it delays it.
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I believe that music is connected by human passions and curiosities rather than by marketing strategies.
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