FUNNY MUSIC QUOTES

"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it."

— John Lennon

"A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians."

— Frank Zappa

"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung."

— Voltaire

"It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself."

— J.S. Bach

"I want to do a musical movie. Like Evita, but with good music."

— Elton John

"I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the manmade sound never equaled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig."

— Alfred Hitchcock

"I don't deserve a Songwriters Hall of Fame Award. But fifteen years ago, I had a brain operation and I didn't deserve that, either. So I'll keep it."

— Quincy Jones

"I love to sing, and I love to drink scotch. Most people would rather hear me drink scotch."

— George Burns

"All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing a song."

— Louis Armstrong

"The musician is perhaps the most modest of animals, but he is also the proudest. It is he who invented the sublime art of ruining poetry."

— Erik Satie

"Talking about music is like dancing about architecture."

— Steve Martin

"When she started to play, Steinway came down personally and rubbed his name off the piano."

— Bob Hope

"The world must be filled with unsuccessful musical careers like mine, and it's probably a good thing. We don't need a lot of bad musicians filling the air with unnecessary sounds. Some of the professionals are bad enough."

— Andy Rooney

"Andrew Lloyd Webber's music is everywhere, but so is AIDS."

— Malcolm Williamson

"I know [canned music] makes chickens lay more eggs and factory workers produce more. But how much more can they get out of you on an elevator?"

— Victor Borge

"I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to."

— Elvis Presley

"Rock 'n' roll will never die. There'll always be some arrogant little brat who wants to make music with a guitar."

— Dave Edmunds

"I'd love to see Christ come back to crush the spirit of hate and make men put down their guns. I'd also like just one more hit single."

— Tiny Tim

"If I didn't do this well, I just wouldn't have anything to do... I can't cook, and I'd be a terrible housewife."

— Freddy Mercury (of Queen)

"For us the most important thing is to be visual, and for the cats watching us to have fun. This is all we want. We get very upset if people get bored when we're only half way through smashing the second set."

— Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd)

"I stole everything I ever heard, but mostly I stole from the horns."

— Ella Fitzgerald

"Playing 'Bop' is like Scrabble with all the vowels missing."

— Duke Ellington

"Get up from that piano. You hurtin' its feelings."

— Jelly Roll Morton

"Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains."

— John Philip Sousa

"We consider that any man who can fiddle all through one of those Virginia Reels without losing his grip may be depended upon in any kind of musical emergency."

— Mark Twain

"I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.' "

— Bob Newhart

"Country music is three chords and the truth."

— Harlan Howard

"Brass bands are all very well in their place—outdoors and several miles away."

— Sir Thomas Beecham

"Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune."

— Kin Hubbard

"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."

— Mark Twain

"There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem."

— George Bernard Shaw

"Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end."

— Igor Stravinsky

"Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour."

— Gioacchino Antonio Rossini

"Last night at Carnegie Hall, Jack Benny played Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn lost."

— Harold C. Schonberg

"Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer."

— John Ruskin

"A good composer is slowly discovered and a bad composer is slowly found out."

— Ernest Newman

"If anyone has conducted a Beethoven performance, and then doesn't have to go to an osteopath, then there's something wrong."

— Simon Rattle

"I once sent him a song and asked him to mark a cross wherever he thought it was faulty. Brahms returned it untouched, saying 'I don't want to make a cemetery of your compositions.' "

— Hugo Wolf

"I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws."

— Charles-Pierre Baudelaire

"I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer."

— Richard Strauss

"Beethoven's last quartets were written by a deaf man and should only be listened to by a deaf man."

— Thomas Beecham

"I can't listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland."

— Woody Allen

Signs of musical pun-ishment:

— On a music store's door:
            "Out to lunch. Bach at 12:30. Offenbach sooner."

— On a music teacher's door:  "Out Chopin"

— On a music library's door:   "Bach in a min-u-et"

"I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is the language I don't understand."

— Sir Edward Appleton

"Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian."

— H. L. Mencken

"An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences."

— Edith Wharton

"Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, sings."

— Ed Gardner

"How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers."

— Gioacchino Antonio Rossini

"When an opera star sings her head off, she usually improves her appearance."

— Victor Borge

"No opera plot can be sensible, for in sensible situations people do not sing."

— W.H. Auden