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No one sits in front of a drum set and thinks they invented it all out of whole cloth. The fact that the set is there means that you've got some dues to pay to Baby Dodds.

John Zorn

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John Zorn
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: September 2
Clarinetist
Composer
Jazz Musician
Musician
Pianist
Record Producer
Saxophonist
New York City
New York
Thinking
Front
Pay
Cloth
Baby
Drum
Fact
Sits
Means
Invented
Facts
Dues
Whole
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Fronts

More quotes by John Zorn

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As soon as you get a certain amount of attention, then everybody kinda wants to start taking pot shots at you. All your old friends that supported you don't support you any more.
John Zorn
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I'm constantly tortured, and that's why I say happiness is irrelevant. Happiness is for children and yuppies.
John Zorn
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You can't be idealistic in this world and not be crazy
John Zorn
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I have art. I have music. I have the history, this legacy behind me that I can look up to. This is what I believe in. If you want to call it God or spirituality, that's all up to you. Basically I believe in something that's bigger than myself, and that gives my life meaning.
John Zorn
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We're not on the outside looking in, we're on the outside looking out.
John Zorn
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I put together the influences of my life in as clear a way as I possibly can, in the same way that Beethoven or Schoenberg or Bach put their influences together.
John Zorn
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The idealists will always be in society, and we will survive
John Zorn
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I used to look at composing music as problem solving. But as I get older, it's not about problem solving anymore. There are no solutions, because there are no problems. You just turn the tap and it flows out.
John Zorn
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Well, in Japan, I have got a group of musicians that I have worked with a lot, that concentrate just on the hardcore stuff, say, that Naked City has been working on. We have like a repertoire of sixty songs now.
John Zorn
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Music is about people for me. It's not about sounds. It's about people it's about putting people into challenging situations. And for me, challenges are opportunities.
John Zorn
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My solo music - I get up onstage, I improvise and it's my improvisation. When I get up onstage with Fred Frith and Mike Patton, then we're improvising together. Then it's not my music it's our music.
John Zorn
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You know, when we were kids, we had to go to a theater to see a movie. And then television came in and you had to wait until midnight to see the one you wanted to see. Now, all you've got to do is go to a store and buy it and you can watch it whenever you want!
John Zorn
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I have not practiced saxophone since 1980. I mean, not one note. I do not pick it up in my house, and that's the end of it.
John Zorn
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If you can make art with sound, can't you make music with objects?
John Zorn
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That is a lot of the reason I do what I do, to really spread the word and spread information and turn people onto different things they may not be, y'know, aware of. That is what Naked City is certainly about
John Zorn
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For about seven years. I really like it there. There are a lot of great musicians. The scene is very open. A lot of stuff going on. People's ears are really open, they are not closed. A lot of scenes here, people just get tunnel vision and are into one thing.
John Zorn
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I mean I have had a very combative relationship with critics because I'm very impatient with people that don't give my work the respect I feel it deserves.
John Zorn
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People sometimes have a very hard time accepting change.
John Zorn
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I was always an outsider, proud of being an outsider. I always reveled in the outsiders.
John Zorn
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I run around, I listen to a lot of music, go to a lot of concerts. And when I see someone that gases me, I try to go out of my way to involve them somehow in what I'm doing or get involved in what they're doing.
John Zorn