We're not getting paid. We have these great musicians with us and it gives us a real charge. And the audience gives us a charge, because they keep it interesting all the time.

When we were making Speaking in Tongues and Remain in Light, we were jamming. From that we were taking the best bits and then recording and improvising on top of those.

You learn just as much from your failures. Sometimes you love your failures even more.

Talking Heads, for me and Chris, was a very personal thing that we shared with a lot of people. In a way, I'm glad it's over, because it allows us to move beyond the restrictions that followed.

Art is not predictable. Art is not golf, as great as that may be. There are 360 degrees of choice to make.

We always thought the Tom Tom Club could change to anything, but it acquired this image, which was cartoon animation and this real light-hearted dance music.

We had our unhappy moments but they got channelled into the kind of sadness that was necessary for singing a song about going nowhere. So it worked out very well I think.

I like the idea of Wild Infancy, of people who have a deprived background, of starting out wild.

David is purely a conceptual artist. He didn't play any instruments or paint or anything. We were painters.

I wasn't originally a bass player. I just found out I was needed, because everyone wants to play guitar.

Make it, not make it? What's the difference? Music is a language, it's a dance of life, and it can be a part of your life without being something that earns.

It's a cruel, heartless world out there in commercial rock 'n' roll, and when you take as much time off as we did, eight years, booking agents don't know if you'll draw.

When Talking Heads started, we called ourselves Thinking Man's Dance Music.

We don't really have more than acouple of solos. It's just the way our music is put together.

I don't want to wreck my voice. I love to concentrate on playing the bass and keeping it very rock-solid. If I were singing, I would have blown out my voice.

We groove off of everything, any sort of live show. The inner dialogue you're having with yourself, between you and the music, is for me the search for God.

I would really love to work with Paul McCartney. Isn't that arrogant?

Stick to your instincts.

I have respect for those who make money at art and do it well and smartly, because that commercial aspect keeps the world going and running, in a sense.

Even the Beatles found it hard to escape their image; they were trapped by it.

We're not getting paid. We have these great musicians with us and it gives us a real charge. And the audience gives us a charge, because they keep it interesting all the time.

We don't always know what we're doing. We often just get excited, put something down, and say, 'Oh, neat'.

Many Japanese painters and calligraphers would change their names intentionally to keep their relationship to the art always fresh. This way, others' expectations can be avoided.

I think the idea of having the show divided into two parts was that Tom Tom Club opened for Talking Heads in Europe, and it was the best we'd ever had as an opening act.

If you have this passion for music, you don't stop doing it - it chooses you and doesn't release you.

It's hard to be perfect, It really is. I keep learning things after I've already bungled it.

Sometimes you don't want to be a slapstick clown in order to convey a funny perception of the world.

Richard Lloyd of Television is one of my favorite guitarists. His mentor was Jimi Hendrix when he was just 14. Jimi was always pounding everything he knew into that kid.

It's just such a pleasure to bring a talent you respect to the world.

I play bass. I don't have to go out there and screech.

Sometimes, you have to go through a phase whether you like it or not.

Generosity is the key to all relationships. To friendships and bands. Thats the golden rule.

That's Tommy, this great producer who comes in contact with people and must have a mental library of personnel who are great for this and great for that, and he brought this whole group of musicians to the project that I'd never worked with before.

Every musical movement that is big enough has to produce some good musicians who wouldn't have had the incentive to start playing without it.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.

The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.

When we started making electronic music I imagined that the reaction we got from the rock musicians must have been similar to the one the beat groups got from people like my dad.

We were brash young fellows'. I was always hanging with the older crowd anyway. The musicians were the Hip Cats, and I was hanging with them anyway. I Just started out real early.

You can have all sorts of relationships, but there's something with musicians working together where you can have relationship that can just continue to grow in a beautiful way.

Most musicians count at the beginning, and never count and talk to their musicians after that. They only talk to them at the end of the song. But I would count with them and talk.

It's my fault in many cases because I don't initiate the contact to talk with a lot of other musicians.

Musician jokes are a kind of joke that usually have to do with how much money someone makes. Musicians are always starving, so they're really mean to each other about who makes what.

What 'jazz' means to me is the worst kind of working conditions, the worst in cultural prejudice. The term 'jazz' has come to mean the abuse and exploitation of black musicians.

We wanted to guide the musicians, so we could create our own sound. We would never let the band just go in and play the chord sheets. We were very focused on what we had in mind for these productions.

I don't take compliments very easily. I think most musicians suffer from low self-esteem to some extent.

I'm always going to get more of a charge playing Chicago than I will Duluth or some place like that. Just because of the history and the people there are way more knowledgeable than a lot of other cities. It's an amazing music scene with some great bands and great musicians.

Watch MTV and you can see what the music scene is like in England. The Spice Girls? Not a lot of creativity in the commercial area. There are still great musicians in England, but not a lot being heard that much.

Success breeds volume, and it's just amazing how many young writers, artists, and musicians there are in town.

At the art college in Edinburgh someone arranged for some London groups to come up and play. I was in a supporting band, with Bernie Green I think. Derek Bailey was one of the visiting musicians. He seemed to like my playing and asked me to come down to London.