Stewart Copeland Quotes

“I'd rather duplicate it myself. Another of our favourite techniques.”

— Stewart Copeland

Making music has gotten easier; selling it has gotten harder. Making music has been democratized, but the market is in the hands of fascists.

— Stewart Copeland

“People are disappointed when they hear my American accent because they regard 'The Police' as an English band but I've clung to my American-ness all the way.”

— Stewart Copeland

“I've got Arabic music in my blood.”

— Stewart Copeland

“Don't believe everything you see on VH1.”

— Stewart Copeland

“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.”

— Stewart Copeland

“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.”

— Stewart Copeland

And the general opinion is we are much better on stage than in the studio.

— Stewart Copeland

“So I suppose that means we can actually play the instruments.”

— Stewart Copeland

“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.”

— Stewart Copeland

“That whole thing of replicating what others do is a siren call. The sirens lure you to the rocks of unoriginality.”

— Stewart Copeland

“[If] you don't have any soul and you don't have any talent, jazz is what you should do ... any fool can do it; all you gotta do is practice.”

— Stewart Copeland

I studied music for my first two years in college. When I went to UC Berkeley, I failed the admission requirements to get into the music school there, so I studied communications and public policy, which actually were a greater engine for my career than a musical education would have been. If I had gotten into the music department at Berkeley, I'd probably be a timpanist in an orchestra right now.

— Stewart Copeland

“Music has an immediate effect. If you want to go beyond that and look underneath, film is a good way of explaining.”

— Stewart Copeland

“I don't have any sympathy for the subject matter, [but] I have great respect for rap artists. In fact, not for the rap artists, but the people who make the music over which they rap. Rap music - the music itself is incredible - but [the people that make the music] are hardly ever credited.”

— Stewart Copeland