Jon Landau Quotes
The Who, England's most self-conscious band, have released 'Quadrophenia,' which in turn freezes in time our image of the mid-Sixties Mod sensibility.
The Beatles production is often so 'perfect' that it sounds computerized. 'Sgt. Pepper' really does sound like it took four months to make.
It didn't matter that Charlie Chaplin may not have been a great director or a great anything else. He made great movies.
Bob Dylan was the source of pop music's unpredictability in the Sixties. Never as big a record-seller as commonly imagined, his importance was first aesthetic and social, and then as an influence.
What makes the Stones' arrogance so divine is that we all believe that long ago and far away they weren't rich and famous but poor and struggling, just like us.
Since her landmark 'Tapestry,' Carole King has both oversimplified and over elaborated that masterful album's style until her music has become something more overtly but less effectively personal.
In the end, the sign of Aretha Franklin's artistry is that she always leaves her mark - first, on the music, then on us.
While the Beatles always had George Martin around to clean up their act, the Rolling Stones had Andrew Loog Oldham to coarsen theirs.
There is absolutely no doubt that the extraordinary Donna Summer belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The early Bob Dylan was compulsively drawn to the conflict between stability and the search for immortality.
The Rolling Stones are violence. Their music penetrates the raw nerve endings of their listeners and finds its way into the groove marked 'release of frustration.'
There is something complete about Stevie Wonder, and one senses that he is not only exceptionally important today, but will continue to be for as long as he chooses.
There is a 'patrician arrogance' to James Taylor that accounts in part for his popularity while it at the same time explains the critical resistance to his work.
The title song of David Bowie's 'Young Americans' is one of his handful of classics, a bizarre mixture of social comment, run-on lyric style, English pop and American soul.
My ambition was to be a record producer, and I had started doing that in the late '60s with my work with the MC5 and my friend Livingston Taylor.
Ringo Starr may not have much of a voice, but when he sang a song on a Beatle album, it had its own special charm.
The Beatles did their best cover work on Little Richard's 'Long Tall Sally' and music influenced by Richard, such as Larry Williams's 'Dizzy Miss Lizzie.
'Call Me' is not an exceptional Al Green album, but it is as solid as a rock at its center.
On first listening, Joni Mitchell's 'Court And Spark,' the first truly great pop album of 1974, sounds surprisingly light; by the third or fourth listening, it reveals its underlying tensions.
Sly Stone doesn't make good albums: only good records. His style is so infinite and revolves around so many crucial aspects that it has only come together perfectly on a handful of his singles.
'Band on the Run' is a carefully composed, intricately designed personal statement that will make it impossible for anyone to classify Paul McCartney as a mere stylist again.
When the Beatles cut old rock n' roll, they were recording music still in their performing repertoire, and besides, they never thought of the music as old.
Joni Mitchell seems destined to remain in a state of permanent dissatisfaction - always knowing what she would like to do, always more depressed when it's done.
Part of me believes that the completed record is the final measure of a pop musician's accomplishment, just as the completed film is the final measure of a film artist's accomplishments.
Barry White seemed so filled with self-parody at first that it was easy to dismiss him. But it is becoming increasingly obvious with every additional release that he is a very talented man.
There were many stars in Motown's firmament - among them, Stevie, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Martha Reeves and Diana Ross - but I happen to have loved the Four Tops most of all.
