I turned to music originally because of my past and needing a release or an outlet to get out anger or frustration or hurt.

Music can be made anywhere, is invisible and does not smell.

I was never too keen on the British music press. They've called us a supermarket hype, and they used to suggest that we didn't write our own songs.

First of all, the music that people call Latin or Spanish is really African. So Black people need to get the credit for that.

My job in this life is to give people spiritual ecstasy through music. In my concerts people cry, laugh, dance. If they climaxed spiritually, I did my job. I did it decently and honestly.

That's why people listen to music or look at paintings. To get in touch with that wholeness.

But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.

I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice.

Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.