Giorgio Moroder Quotes

1. I liked very much the sound of Motown in the early times, but now they do not have such a recognizable feel.  



2. (on Donna Summer) We left it for a while until Donna came back to me with an idea for the lyrics. We did it just to see if it worked, and it did.

 3. We are always trying very hard to improve the overall quality of our work, while Kraftwerk are still holding on to the older ways of recording.



4. (on Donna Summer) We were very lucky to find Donna, the first really good black girl singer who was living here in Munich.

5. Punk lyrics, so many of them I can hardly understand at all. Nor do I know much about the social movement or the political life.


6. We take something from everything, then make it our own. There were aspects that we have used from the Philadelphia sound. We internationalized it.

7. (on Donna Summer) When Donna toured in Italy, the press was very negative and critical of the luxury of her show, comparing it with the poverty in Italy.




8. I would never be interested in producing a punk group. I probably wouldn't be able to feel this kind of music sufficiently. I prefer to stay within the fields I am capable.

9. (on Donna Summer) When I went to see Donna in performance in New York, the audience was all black, but there were no remarks about this to me.

10. I would not be happy to do what I do unless I felt that the large audience wanted it.

11. I prefer Tangerine Dream, that kind of thing. I used to know these guys very well. Tangerine Dream became a little boring. You can only do so much with all these sequencers.

12. Disco is music for dancing, and people will always want to dance.

13. I had my first hit as a composer about six months after I started writing all the time, with a German song in '68.


14. Why do I always work with women? Maybe this has something to do with disco.

15. Some writers have this thing about German producers and players. I am not German, Donna is American, so is Roberta Kelly, so are Silver Convention.

16. Some of the industrial sections of Northern Italy, people are not at all happy there. I can understand The Red Brigades because they have the support of people who are not heard by politicians.

17. I was happy to have a hit, but my intention was always to compose with an English or American feeling.





18. You have to balance the sound so that it's not too much like an obvious synthesizer. It should be subtle. We spend a lot of time getting that right, adjusting the knobs.

19. Something like "MacArthur Park" is different, very complicated to make.

20. I really see not much difference between our way and that of someone like Phil Spector. Both our intentions and our artists are different from rock musicians.

21. We are always trying to improve the overall quality of our work. If I were to record another synthesizer album right now, I wouldn't do it at all like "I Feel Love". That sound is out of date.

22. You need an already successful roster of acts to establish yourself before you even begin thinking of something new.

23. Donna Summer worked for 10 years and suffered a very hard life with her daughter.

24. At that time, in Germany, in 69 -'70, they had already discotheques. So, I would take my car, would go to a discotheque and sing maybe 30 minutes. I think I had about seven, eight songs. I would partially sleep in the car because I didn't want to drive home and that helped me for about almost two years to survive in the beginning.

25. (on Donna Summer) Donna's appeal…she is a beautiful woman, but it is the whole production, the package, that matters more.

26. I worked very, very hard for seven or eight years without making anything back at all. I was losing much over my productions.





27. The audience is becoming more and more sophisticated.

28. In pop or rock you can make a fast song or a slow one, but in disco there is really just the one rhythm.

29. Even with Kiss, you must never forget the work that goes into making them a success.

30. I think it would be stupid for us to try and tell people who are dancing in a discotheque about the problems of the world. That is the very thing they have come away to avoid.


31. In both pop and disco, the meaning of the lyrics is not too important. I have nothing I feel I particularly want to say.

32. Not only is the government in Italy corrupt, but the whole system. You have to do the best for yourself and that is it.

33. Every business is there to make money, and making a record is business. This tends to be forgotten by many.

34. The communists in Italy are very different from the usual communist world. They are very left socialists.





35. I would have liked to make records like the classic Motown records, but five years ago we weren't advanced enough.

36. I am looking for ways of changing natural sounds in other directions, away from pure electronic treatments.

37. When I was fifteen, sixteen, when I really started to play the guitar I definitely wanted to become a musician It was almost impossible because the dream was so big I didn't see any chance because I was living in a little town; I was studying and when I finally broke away from school and became a musician I thought: "Well, now I may have a little bit of a chance," because all I really wanted to do is music - and not only play music but compose music.

38. I am not a politician, I am a producer.




39. There is more to that band Kiss than four guys with faces painted to look like cats. Neil Bogart risked his professional standing to launch Donna and Kiss, all his savings.

40. It is at least 10 times more difficult to get a good synthesizer sound than on an acoustic instrument.

41. I consider women to be the same as men. I am deeply fond of my girlfriend.



42. If I were to find a disco group who could play by themselves, I would produce them. It is becoming a bit boring to work with the same musicians over and over again.

43. I wanted to do an album with the sound of the '50s, the sound of the '60s, of the '70s and then have a sound of the future. And I said: "Wait a second…I know the synthesizer - why don't I use the synthesizer which is the sound of the future?" And I didn't have any idea what to do, but I knew I needed a click so we put a click on the 24 track which then was synched to the Moog Modular. I knew that it could be a sound of the future but I didn't realize how much the impact would be.

44. I didn't even think to notice that for the large audience this was perhaps a very new sound. We did the whole thing in a day.

45. I am certainly not racist; I even like the British.

46. If we had been based elsewhere other than Munich, we might have achieved our success earlier. In London, for example, you have more facilities and are nearer the pulse of the industry.

47. Once you free your mind about a concept of harmony and music being correct, you can do whatever you want. So, nobody told me what to do, and there was no preconception of what to do.


48. My music was typically continental - nothing like, say, The Beatles.

49. Disco does work better with black artists or players. They just feel it more.

50. Nowadays you need so much money to be able to launch a new artist, notably in America; you would hardly believe the sums involved.

51. And these ideas the writers are having about us using machines and becoming like machines - they must be making a joke.

52. If you want to buy a car in Italy, you have to bribe someone to get a licence in 10 days instead of two months.

53. I don't think there is too much art involved in what I do.







54. I am not so complicated or intelligent a composer, nor am I very interested in becoming so. I am much more happy doing what I know I can do than what I am not sure I could do.

55. I achieved something specially different with "Love To Love You Baby" and "I Feel Love". These songs will endure.



56. It is nonsense to say that we make all our music automatically. I know how difficult it was to get a certain sound.

57. As for Germany, the situation seems mainly OK. Most people have good living standards.

58. Phil Ramone is very special. Barbra Streisand or Diana Ross...they are the best.

59. I have to admit, I do not listen to much rock music.

60. There were discotheques in the States before, but we have taken a lead in making the music. Perhaps we just had the correct professional attitudes.





61. As it happens, I am not a very good keyboards player anyway. In fact, I am a lousy keyboards player.

62. It's really hard to believe that in five years' time nobody will want to dance. Maybe they are bringing back the tango or the waltz. Who is knowing? Not me.

63. Too many of these writers in the music papers, they are misunderstanding everything. The disco sound is not art or anything so serious.





64. They say that I, a white producer, should not make songs with a black girl. This is ridiculous.

65. I don't know about that technical stuff. I'd rather not know. I just listen to it.

66. As it is we are having enormous problems with the drums and percussion, for example. Because you are staying with one tempo, you have to change how you record that tempo.

67. I am reluctant to judge things without being informed.

68. My name is Giovanni Giorgio, but everybody calls me Giorgio.

69. All the good songs were coming from England and America, so for some time I didn't try to compete by writing in English.

70. Many producers began to make disco records after our success. This is a great thing for the industry in Europe.


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