Beatles (John Lennon) - "Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it. If you were going to give Rock 'n' Roll another name you might as well call it Chuck Berry. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - Rock and Roll or Christianity."
Beatles (Ringo Star) - "Of course I'm ambitious. What's wrong with that? Otherwise you sleep all day. I love Beethoven, especially the poems."
Beatles (George Harrison) - "I don't want to be in the business full-time because I'm a gardener. I plant flowers and watch them grow. And so my music, it doesn't matter if I did it 20 years ago or if I did it tomorrow. It doesn't go with trends. My trousers don't get wider and tighter every six months. My music just stays what it is, and that's the way I like it."
B.B. King - "Eric Clapton - you know it's the Blues when he plays it. We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about but try to be yourself while you're doing so."
Bee Gees (Barry Gibb) - "We're so overground, we're underground."
Billy Joel - "I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music. A typical day in the life of a heavy metal musician consists of a round of golf and an AA meeting."
Bob Dylan - "It's not me, it's the songs. I'm just the postman, I deliver the songs. When I first heard Elvis' voice, I knew that I wasn't going to work for anybody ... hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail. This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway. People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around - the music and the ideas."
Bob Marley - "I like Wagner's music much better than anybody's. It's so loud that one can talk the whole time without people hearing you. My music will go on forever. Maybe it's a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever."
Britney Spears - "I wish my hair was thicker, and I wish my feet were prettier. My toes are really ugly. I wish my ears were smaller. And my nose could be smaller too. Marry Prince William? I'd love that. Who wouldn't want to be a princess?"
Bryan Ferry - "I don't think I'm so much of a smoothie. I'm more of a rough-diamond type really. Secretly, I wanted to look like Jimi Hendrix, but I could never quite pull it off."
Buddy Holly - "Without Elvis, none of us could have made it."
Carpenters - (Richard Carpenter) - "I never could determine what was going through Karen's head."
Celine Dion - "I don't like listening to music. I'm not a music fan."
Christina Aguilera - "I want to be a poet. I don't want to talk about genies in bottles anymore."
The Cure (Robert Smith) - "I started wearing lipstick because it made me feel confident and more attractive. I'm completely featureless without it. But on stage I always used to lean my mouth on the mike and shut my eyes so I wouldn't have to see the people. And at the end I'd come off with lipstick smeared all over my face, so I thought I might as well go on with it like that and make it look intentional."
Crowded House (Neil Finn) - "Songwriting is a mystery. And it's a mystery to me that it's a mystery. But that sounds stupid."
David Bowie - "I'm always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don't even take what I 'am' seriously."
Dido - "I feel really lucky to have found musical success before I'm 30, to be doing absolutely what I want to do. I would be quite happy if I died tomorrow."
Dire Straits (Mark Knopfler) - "I don't feel pressure. They say 'how can you follow Brothers In Arms?' But it's only a record, only a band playing and touring. It's not the Second Coming. As far as being a 'player's player', you've only got to go to Nashville or Argentina, and you can forget about it. The world is full of amazing guitar players, and you know it, and I know it ... it's a humbling experience..."
Dolly Parton - "I've been guilty of most of the stuff that's been said about me to some degree. And if I ain't done it, I probably will."
Donna Summer - "God had to create disco music so I could be born and be successful."
Elton John - "Anyone who lip-synchs in public on stage when you pay 75 pounds to see them should be shot."
Elton John - "I went up to Prince and said 'I'm a big fan of your stuff' and he looked at me and just walked off...left me standing there like a ****. He's a prat, but a clever prat."
Elvis Presley - "I'm not kidding myself. My voice alone is just an ordinary voice. What people come to see is how I use it. If I stand still while I'm singing, I'm dead. Man, I might as well go back to driving a truck..I don't know anything about music...in my line you don't have to."
Eric Clapton - "Whatever your standing in life, the most important thing is behaving in ways that help other people. It's the same with music. I am a servant of the music ... and if I get caught up in ego, I'll lose everything .. it'll burn and that's a guarantee."
Frank Sinatra - "You can be the most artistically perfect performer in the world, but an audience is like a broad - if you're indifferent, Endsville."
Frank Sinatra - "People often remark that I'm pretty lucky. Luck is only important in so far as getting the chance to sell yourself at the right moment. After that, you've got to have talent and know how to use it."
Garth Brooks - "I think most people realise I'm just a bum who got lucky."
INXS (Michael Hutchence) - "Kylie Minogue - she's so great. You'd love her if you met her. Everyone would. In a way I wish everyone could, to see what a person she is. She's so sweet and no bull and really funny, man, really funny. The Rolling Stones are like a weight around your neck. All that..'you're not meant to rock after you're 30...you've got to die in a car crash or of a drug overdose."
James Brown - "I've outdone anyone you can name...Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500. I'm not going to be joining ZZ Top. You know they can't play my stuff. It's too complicated."
Janet Jackson - "Marvin Gaye is our John Lennon. The longer he's gone, the more young people appreciate his art. 'What's Going On' was a work of genius far ahead of it's time."
John Denver - "There's one piece of advice my dad gave me when he dropped me off at college. He said, 'You've got the talent. You can sing and play guitar. That doesn't make you any better than anyone else."
John Lee Hooker - "Poor people have the blues because they're poor and hungry. Rich people can't sleep at night because they're trying to hold on to their money and everything they have."
Johnny Cash - "Prisoners are the greatest audience that an entertainer can perform to."
Kate Bush - "When I'm writing I've been playing something for a couple of hours and I'm almost in a trance. At two or three in the morning you can actually see bits of inspiration floating about and grab them."
Lionel Richie - "The music business was not safe, but it was FUN. It was like falling in love with a woman you know is bad for you, but you love every minute with her, anyway."
Louis Armstrong - "There is two kinds of music, the good and bad. I play the good kind. All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing a song."
Madness (Suggs) - "I think Bowie was so innovative because he was a bit mad. He started the character Ziggy Stardust and then he said he actually started believing he was this character that was like a god."
Madonna - "Elvis Presley? He's God."
Oasis (Liam Gallagher) - "Americans want grungy people, stabbing themselves in the head on stage. They get a bright bunch like us, with deodorant on, they don't get it. I'm 24 years old, I've got a load a money, what am I gonna do, sit at home and twiddle me thumbs? No. I'm gonna go out and 'ave it."
Oasis (Noel Gallagher) - "My main concern before going on stage is: 'What frame of mind is our kid going to be in?' If I ever get to go to the moon, I'll probably just stand on the moon and go: 'Hmmm, yeah, fair enough, gotta go home now."
Rolling Stones (Mick Jagger) - "When we heard we were topping the bill over James Brown we couldn't believe it. We tried for two days to get it changed round - I mean you can't follow an act like that."
Phil Collins - "You know, a song is like a kid. You bring it up. And sometimes something you thought was going to be fantastic, by the time it's finished, is a bit of a disappointment."
Phil Collins - "I suppose Phil Collins offers 'something for everybody' and in hipdom that's not cool. But in the real world there's no shame in that at all."
Pink Floyd (Roger Waters) - "We're not ignored by The Guinness Book Of Records, but we've been largely ignored by the media during our lifetime. If you read any article, no mention is ever made of Pink Floyd. We're never included in the same sentences as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who. I wrote 'The Wall' as an attack on stadium rock - and there's Pink Floyd making money out of it by playing it in stadiums! Pathetic. They spoiled my creations."
The Pogues (Shane MacGowan) - "There is drinking in lots of the songs because there is drinking in life. Drinking stimulates the imagination."
Queen (Freddie Mercury) - "Does it mean this, does it mean that, that's all anybody wants to know. **** them, darling. I say what any decent poet would say if you dared ask him to analyse his work: If you see it, dear, then it's there."
Robbie Williams - "To be honest, I don't want No.1's anymore. Now, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind the odd few, but I'd also like a record going in at No.8 and staying around."
Sting - "If anyone described me as a genius I would laugh. I have my moments - I just have to join them together...If you take the praise seriously then you have to take the bricks they throw at you seriously."
Texas (Steve Washington, drummer) - "When on tour with Jason Donovan, we were half way through one of the shows (at Wembley) when I needed to go to the toilet, desperately. Luckily for me there was a song coming up with 32 bars of keyboards and visual effects. At this point, I disappeared off the stage, legged it to the toilet, and managed to return to my drum stool in time to play a 2-bar fill into the rest of the song. I was lucky; there was no way I could have held on until the end of the show."
Thin Lizzy (Phil Lynott) - "I am egotistical, that I won't deny...I do think I'm good - in fact, I know I'm good...but I know that I don't appeal to everybody."
U2 (Bono) - "Pop music tells you that everything is OK and rock music tells you that it's not, but that you can change it."
Van Morrison - "Music is spiritual. The music business is not. Being famous was extremely disappointing for me. When I became famous it was a complete drag and it is still a complete drag."
Waylon Jennings - "I've always felt that blues, rock & roll and country are just about a beat apart."
Bill Medley - "My daughter McKenna thought I sang with the Everly Brothers ... I said, 'no I was one of the Righteous Brothers' and she said 'didn't they invent the airplane?'"