Stewart Copeland (b. 1952)

  • The critical factor that makes me a composer, and that you can’t really be a composer without, is a river of music going through my head almost 24/7. It’s just a fact of my life that there is music in my head. Writer’s block? What’s that? It’s more like I just open up the gate and it pours out. I can’t really explain where that comes from or what that is, but without that, I can’t imagine doing this job.
  • After twenty years of film scoring I’m now focused on concert music instead. I love scoring film and I love working with directors, but it’s a classic scenario in which the work is brilliant and the business sucks.
  • I work with music editors, but I inevitably do a lot of music editing myself, too. A composer is constantly editing his own music.
  • My philosophy is no excuses, no explanations. I don’t want to be doing caveats.
  • A lot of times a constriction, an obstacle is a key to a great revelation. . . you scratch your head and you come up with something, and that’s called inspiration. So, . . . limitations are often a good thing.
  • I am someone who is mystified by procrastination. I don’t even understand how that works. The process of procrastination seems like something so against human nature. To be able to watch television or stare out the window or do anything other than address the mission is incomprehensible to me. . . I can’t eat, breathe, drink, do anything until I’m on it, and that’s where the obsession hits. 
  • A collaborative artistic experience is a minefield.
  • Making music has gotten easier; selling it has gotten harder. Making music has been democratized, but the market is in the hands of fascists.
  • The great opera composers were so good at their job, that the whole genre came to be built around the concept of the composer’s vision.
  • In a film score, the last thing you want to do is take people out of the movie. The music is secondary. In opera, the music is the main event.
  • That whole thing of replicating what others do is a siren call. The sirens lure you to the rocks of unoriginality.
  • Drummers shouldn’t just think of themselves as drummers. If you’re going to be a musician, you should expand your horizons, compose things, and work with other instruments.
  • There’s no better way to liven up a dinner party than to dump on jazz.
  • There’s nothing wrong with opera that a new opera couldn’t fix.
  • Jimi [Hendrix] was Mitch Mitchell’s guitarist.
  • A teen-aged daughter that would be charmed by Mom writing her a chanson would be an anomaly in the cosmos.
  • It’s only music! There’s really no penalty for sucking.
  • Do NOT hit undo. Even the most random spranglings will contain gems that you won’t discern until later. Riotous abandon will become a habit and you will spill over with music.  Judge not! The best stuff is behind your conscious mind so let it be revealed!  Point yourself at your instrument and crank it out. Soon the genius within will reveal herself!
  • What happens when you play rock music to lions? When they’re on the outside and you’re in a cage? Well, they didn’t like my music very much, but they fancied me. Complete Philistines, those lions!
  • Rhythmatism is the study of patterns that weave the fabric of life.