I had this instrument that I built in high school. It was a huge, six-foot-long stringed instrument, and I started playing with that amplified and singing through power electronic stuff. I played those shows, and it would blow the lid off of everybody, and everybody would flip out.
I get the greatest feeling when I'm singing. It's other-worldly. Your feet are anchored into the Earth and into this energy force that comes up through your feet and goes up the top of your head and maybe you're holding hands with the angels or the stars, I have no idea.
I'm the only actor who has done everything, right from anchoring shows to composing and singing songs to theatre to movies.
In the ancient times, bards went around singing the epics, which were storehouses of philosophy.
You can sometimes get your own feelings across more strongly if you pretend that you're singing it from someone else's angle. But it's always from me. It's just a new way of framing it.
During the ten years I lived in the U.K., I frequently attended an Anglican church just outside of London. I enjoyed the energetic singing and the thoughtful homilies. And yet, I found it easy to be a pew warmer, a consumer, a back row critic.
I was constantly, always and forever, trying to perform the musical 'Annie' for anyone who would listen, and I have a terrible singing voice. It was the first thing that made me think I wanted to be an actress.
I had lots of breaks. I guess the one that got my foot in the door was singing the National Anthem at the National Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma City in '74.
I've never been more nervous in my life than singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl.
I had a gig in Sweden. There were thousands of people there, and when I launched into 'I'm Yours,' they were all singing along. It was as if I was singing the Swedish national anthem. I was stunned.
I hated singing. I wanted to be an actress. But I don't think I'd have made it any other way.
My favorite song? 'Amazing Grace.' Anybody singing it. But the best it'll ever be done is by the Scottish National Pipe band and their National Orchestra. It'll bring tears to your eyes.
My singing voice is somewhere between a drunken apology and a plumbing problem.
We would play songs live on stage, and then we'd watch their reaction we were receiving immediately, if people were dancing and singing along. If they weren't, then we'd go into the dressing rooms of the different NBA teams that we were playing in their arenas, and we'd change the songs right there.
Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin. Now, they are so subtle, they can milk you with two notes. They can make you feel like they told you the whole universe. But I don't know that yet. All I got now is strength. Maybe if I keep singing, maybe I'll get it.
Growing up in Cleveland, I learned about singing from my mother, who had once sung professionally and who admired Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin.
I never breathe through the nose, not when I'm singing. In the opera, you don't have so much time. That's fine at the beginning of an opera or after somebody else has been doing an aria, and you want to get a good fresh start.
I once sang 'Summer Nights,' from 'Grease,' at a bar in Melbourne with John Travolta, who's a good friend of mine. He looked cool singing the part of Danny - sitting in an armchair, smoking a cigar - while I got stuck playing Sandy.
I always try, when I'm singing songs, to interpret them the way that I would've arranged them. I think about the melody first, and then I pull out my guitar and start singing it.
I couldn't live on the singing at first, so I worked as a cleaner, in a launderette, in a garage, face painting and doing the windows of shops at Christmas, 'cause I had been to art college.