American Musician Quotations | Page 9

There are nights when you can feel stale because you've fallen into a pattern by touring too much, but it's easy to get out of it by deliberately getting in trouble and playing yourself into a corner to then see if you can get out of it.

We're all players and musicians and we sure all get along good. We just clicked right off the bat. We started playing and then we almost immediately started recording.

I had the qualifications, but I was not chosen.

We can come from our own particular point of view and lay it down. We should not be throwing verbal rocks at each other. We're all responsible to continue the growth of Hip Hop.

And basically I always said when I was little that if I ever became successful or a celebrity, I would buy her this huge house and she would never have to work anymore. And I've done that. So I feel happy about doing that.

He has a method that likens the musician to an athlete, so I do physical exercises designed to keep a musician in shape in order to perform the function, which is to play music.

Spitfire asked me if I had a problem talking about Van Halen or Extreme. I really don't. There are people who are just going to want to know what it was like to play with Eddie.

Just this morning, out of a large memory for songs, and having been obsessed by them since childhood, suddenly, at the age of 84, I thought of a song I hadn't thought of in over 50 years. It came into my head unbidden.

When we started there was this element of these experiments we were doing where we weren't really sure how the music would play out because the music was all on different players.

We have a thin candy shell, I'm surprised you didn't know that.

I still felt we had some really good music on that record, but it's a shame that we couldn't make it better. And the tour was a total mess. We just had no life, no energy, and I felt we were going through the motions.

Those 12 years, they were ambiguous at best.

But the truth is that critics are by definition critical. That's their job.

I learned a lot from that first record and I learned a lot from my experiences touring, but really the biggest education I got over the past two years was learning the importance of arrangements.

In this business it takes time to be really good - and by that time, you're obsolete.

I drilled holes in the floor of the club, and it's sinking.

He and I were about as compatible as a rat and a boa constrictor.

I've been told by people that it's okay to cry but, you know what, it's been used against me.

She looked at me penetratingly. So I suppose you can figure out what happened next.

This record for the first time - feels like a record that really represents my whole entire life and instead of just a period of my life. And it is really kind of eye opening and it makes me feel really good to hear this record and hear all the years.

Oh yeah, it's great see music and to play music in small places. And it's really fun for me to play here because, you know, I played two feet from people all night. And after all those years, it's great to be able to talk to folks.

Anybody that sings the blues is in a deep pit, yelling for help.

Well, more than me saying to the rest of the country music industry there is not enough traditional country music - that is not necessarily the statement in truth. I think more so that I, me, missed it more than anything else.

I admit to drinking it, but I did not swallow.

People see my current success but don't realize I've worked hard to get where I am. I used to clean garbage off the Philadelphia docks and put a lot of time into developing my music.

No, nothing has changed in my life at all, and nothing would change if I had millions.

We just wanted to write a bunch of songs that we thought were good songs.

The way to do it is to put as much life into the song as I can. You can either get it to breathe or you can't.

Bob Dylan is quite a songwriter, and a great singer and musician. I won't bother with comparing myself to him, but I will say that I heard his records at a very young age and I still listen to all his records.

You need these experiences. Just know that sometimes, the director has a specific look in mind.

We were a country band with a social conscience.

When they brought Roth back into the picture, obviously I didn't go along with that too well.

Mr. Burns is a father symbol to me, and you can omit the word symbol.

Well, the future for me is already a thing of the past.

If they weren't laughing with me, okay; if they want to laugh at me it's better than nothing.

Then I tried out for the Fontana High School drum line, in Riverside, and I did really well. I got second chair, and played snare in that drum line for three years.

But then when he left, I realized that it was harder to write songs and feel spiritually connected to art and music as a band. When he came back I felt it again, instantaneously.

I really was a fan of his and always have been - his writing especially, you know? I think people a lot of times overlook that part, because he kind of got into that party character so heavy.

It is sobering to consider that when Mozart was my age he had already been dead for a year.

You know me, I've got to find some way to get a fresh fire.

Sometimes I'll sing the same verse through the entire song, because the other verses aren't clicking. And when they do come to me, I'm in the middle of that same verse!

We just done doing The Blessed Hellride tour and Ozzfest.

I'm still proud of what I've done, even if it hasn't been the biggest song on the radio or hasn't gone to number one.

We're bigger now than we were in the late 70s when we were peaking.

I think it would be great if there were no age limit.

Shows have been sold out. It's overwhelming, you know. I had no idea what to expect with this new sound and everything and just to see so many people just come out and embrace it, it's overwhelming.

Right now I'm listening to a lot of different things but I listen to a lot of classical music. Eventually I would like to compose and perform classical.

Don't change a thing. That's one of the best gimmicks a band could ever come up with.

There were no rules, other than that the song should sound good and be fun to play.

We went for the best overall feel on each song. There are no musical overdubs at all. It's a true live record; it's one of the few true live records out there.

It's a big error to think that because you like somebody's work, you're going to like him.

Well, somebody's got to sing. They won't hire you unless you sing.

When I was coming up, I practiced all the time because I thought if I didn't I couldn't do my best.

Everything that I have professionally, and so much of what I have personally, is because of this great, fair city, and to see it being drowned like this is almost unbearable.

We started combining the use of light and the use of theatrics and the use of as many art forms as possible, and it's still growing - that's the whole idea of it.

I realized that I needed to be anonymous on the street and somebody else on the stage. I had tried to put my street self on the stage, but what they want is an actor on stage.

My father was a carpenter, a very good carpenter. He also worked for the Jones boys. They were not family members, we weren't related at all. They started the policy racket in Chicago, and they had the five and dime store.

Thousands of kids and parents come up to us and say, How do we get better as a singer?

Some guys record an album with songs that are filler. I recorded this album like it was my last.

Well, we were all in high school and we got together, and in college - we were in art college together.

It's funny the way most people love the dead. Once you are dead, you are made for life.

When you're a mom and you have three children, nothing bothers you. Trust me. Who cares what people say? I've got other things to deal with.

We spent most of our life almost like street rats just running around the street until we were ten years old.

Sometimes we pee on each other before we go on stage.

They pick all of us out, and then they decide, they computerize, decide if they like it or don't like it, and then they go home, and then they come back again because they're not sure what they saw.

This is the band I always wanted to be in.

A man sees what he wants to see, And disregards the rest.

Bow down before the one you serve, you're going to get what you deserve.

We all write the music, and then Mark and Tom write the lyrics.

We were concerned with having good songs, not just songs that go two hundred miles per hour.

A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.

The last two records I liked playing a lot.

I have a really hard time writing my own lyrics for this record, because one, I had to write so many and also I was kind of perplexed by the idea of how I was going to sing and play... because at that time, we hadn't really thought about asking someone else.

I think they'd rather us follow our hearts and I hope that's what some people will understand.

Hi-Tek is on three or four songs on the new record.

I think they want to keep it separate, but I've never been a crossover artist for some reason.

We all liked the Descendants and stuff like that, so we started playing it. It's not that it was really hard, well, it does take skill to play fast and keep up your stamina. But it was something that just happened.

We just wrote songs that seemed good to us. We wrote the album in like two weeks. We could have had more time, but we accomplished what we needed to in the two weeks.

I mean, most of it is probably more obscure and just more noisy than either of those two bands, but Thurston has stuff all the time that he's involved with that is fairly obscure and experimental.

No. Better research needed. Fire your research person. No fishnet stockings. Never. Not in this band.

It slaps your dignity just right. I loved the idea of these proud, dignified black men, and I saw the older ones wounded, and it wounded me ten times as much because I couldn't stand seeing them hurt like this.

The two are unrelated. I'm not into turtles or space stuff.

Apparently, the image of our president is as offensive to MTV as it is to me.

Just blow in it and sound bad for about a year and then make it sound a little bit better, and you get a little band together, and then you get a few jobs. You take four guys that sound half bad, but if they're 25 percent each, they can give 100 percent, you know?

See, there were certain rules I'd always used, and people like Trane, they would break those rules.

I told them if were going to do it were going to do it right, I'm not leaving 'til it's done. My wife, child and I slept in the studio. We cut these raw.

The people who really got me off were dealing with the musical potential of the Instrument.

The only drawback is once the work is done you rarely see each other.

We've always been a band that stood up for what we thought was right.

We've always been a band that just did out own thing. We've never really set any goals, we just did what we wanted and set out to do.

We started the publicity, we started moving in the same direction with them, and then the devil came in and just turned that right around.

When I was lieutenant governor, Jerry Brown was governor and you might recall that he spent just about a year of my term out of the state.

When I was invited to sing with Pavarotti, I had about two weeks to learn Italian.

When it came to the music that we produced, I am pretty happy with what we did.

We're making this huge changeover from underground to more mainstream audiences. I don't know if we could ever repeat this type of feeling. We're really excited.

We're somehow confined to our name, the Beach Boys; it confines you to a certain image, but there's so much there that's so rich.

When we had hot lunch in elementary school, I liked those biscuits they served. You could smell them about an hour before lunch.

What has happened is that to some degree they have taken an attitude where they don't listen to demos of diverse subject matters. They're looking for demos like the record the guy on the left just did.

We brought out the old catalog and the majority of the Van Halen fans did appreciate it, but in the end, they wanted their Dave.

Yes, Barometer was written in Key West and I did spend many hours at the library there. Every song on that album has a literary connection.