John Zorn Quotes

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.

You need to believe in something that's bigger than yourself. I think that's what everybody wants to believe in that.

Classical stuff takes a lot of rehearsal time and preparation, but with stuff that involves improvisation, you can over-rehearse it and it gets stale. You don't want it to be too comfortable. In fact, a good sound check, a good rehearsal usually means a bad performance.

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!

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.

People are great. But there's people who you get together with and you talk and you go away feeling energized, you feel inspired. And then there's people who you talk with and you go away feeling horrible, feeling drained, feeling like you're incapable of doing anything. Those people are psychic vampires and I now stay away from them.

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.

The idealists will always be in society, and we will survive

It's a blast to watch. It's a lot more interesting live than it is on record. I mean, it really is a theatrical event. It's a sporting event! Cause you never know what's gonna happen.

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.

That was my challenge as a composer. Like with anything, to keep yourself interested in doing what you do, you set yourself challenges. So I said, Okay, I'll try to write a hundred tunes in a year.

Great musicians accept everything that they hear and find something good. They take what they like and they throw away what they don't like

The magic that you find in surf music, I think, is really timeless. You know, when I was very young, I was in a surf band. Surf music is an instrumental music that still means a lot to me, not in an nostalgic way, but as something that really gets to the heart of the guitar itself.

I'm not a practicing kabbalist. I'm not a spiritual master. I'm not a rabbi. I don't - but it's part of who I am.

I have no doubts. I know what gets in the way and I know what encourages me to do more work.

It's a matter of keeping people on a spontaneous edge.

I'm constantly tortured, and that's why I say happiness is irrelevant. Happiness is for children and yuppies.

I feel like there are messages. I feel like there are angels. I feel that there is a legacy and an energy. And I feel that it's possible to tap into that.

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.

If you can make art with sound, can't you make music with objects?

One thing that I do ask myself when I'm in the creative process is, 'Does the world need this?'

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

We're not on the outside looking in, we're on the outside looking out.

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.

People sometimes have a very hard time accepting change.

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.

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.

You can't be idealistic in this world and not be crazy

One of the reasons I started Tzadik, which is my own label, is to keep things in print. I got tired of labels dropping things out of print when they don't sell.

I was always an outsider, proud of being an outsider. I always reveled in the outsiders.

When I'm writing, sometimes it gets to that place where I feel like the piece is writing itself and I'm trying not to get in the way

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.

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.

I have wit in my work and a sense of humor, but I do not use irony in any way

Discipline is important as long as you're having a good time. What I always did was I did what I enjoyed, and I think that's why I don't have any grey hairs.

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.

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.

I have a very beautiful life with great friends and I look forward to waking up every day. Every day is a vacation but every day is a workday. I don't want to take vacations because music is my life and if I escape from music, that's the same thing as death. So a vacation is death to me. Sitting on the beach for a week is my idea of hell. That would kill me.

I have about two or three people, we don't have an office, we don't even have a dedicated phone line. We do it out of our own homes, and we make it work.

I create work, and I devote myself to the creative process, and I try to stay pure in that process and be worthy of the messages that I receive. You can't sit down and write 300 compositions in a three-month period and think that you're doing it all by yourself.

And I try to be as diplomatic as I can, but it always ends up being a psychodrama up there on stage.

I’m constantly in doubt about what I’m doing, I’m constantly tortured, and that’s why I say happiness is irrelevant. Happiness is for children and yuppies. I’m not striving for happiness, I’m trying to get some work done. And sometimes the best work is done under doubt. Constant rethinking, and reevaluating what you’re doing, working and working until you feel it’s finished. And that’s an interesting point too, that you’ve got to know when to stop. Sometimes there’s a magical moment when everything comes together.

Eye was a great discovery. He is one of the great vocalists of all time.

I don't ascribe to the idea of the ivory tower composer who sits alone in a room composing his masterpieces and then comes down from Mount Sinai with the tablets. It doesn't work like that. The job of a composer is putting something down on a piece of paper that will inspire the person who's playing.

I don't play favorites with people. My basic philosophy is that the only way to make the world a better place is by bringing something beautiful to every single person you run into at every moment of the day, so how can you play favorites with somebody?

I see myself and many artists like me as the torchbearers through these dark ages.