Billy Sherwood Quotations

I've had the luxury of owning my own studio, 24 analogue, 48 digital, endless effects, endless hardcore gear, that I don't have to rent, I don't get stuck with the bills, it's all mine.

So for my studio purposes, I know that I'm in my studio with technicians who've done amazing things to my board and to my power amps and I know what I can deliver out of my studio.

Sometimes I hear a drum groove in my head and I rush down to my studio.

I love the feeling of creating pictures in someone's mind just by spelling out the right lyrical combination.

I dont have any assistants, I do it all myself, I dont have any secretaries.

So in one sense you don't have the classic keyboard player in Yes.

I mean, Beatles songs were two and a half minutes long, and they're fantastic.

And I found that when I built my own place and just shut the door, the creativity was endless.

We came off the road of the last tour very inspired to just keep playing, so we went to Canada.

So that studio served its purpose, and still is working very well for other people right now.

And as you said, everyone contributed; certain areas of material came from certain individuals.

I have always enjoyed different kinds of music.

I love all Yes music and love to play it live, but I'm most interested in making new music with Yes.

I think that the climate within the band has changed, it's now in a more functional situation.

I wasn't really writing with anything commercial in mind I just wanted to create some new music.

I wrote songs with the guys from Air Supply for their record... So I was just writing songs.

I'd written songs with lots of people, from one spectrum to the other.

I'm very proud of it as a Yes record amongst many of the other Yes records.

So I was always around music and my dad was in his own way a progressive jazzer, a big band jazzer guy.

I know that if I went to other studios, like in Vancouver, that those are set up to be as professional and as true, so it's just a different flavour, it's a different sound, but I think both have their place.

It's an album that is a little bit different and probably isn't easy to get out. It's not likely that a major label would have picked it up and said that they had a smash hit record.

So whenever I had some in-between producing time down in my studio I popped a tape in and started working on it. Working a little bit at a time, it actually took almost four years.

Everyone is really getting along with each other and we enjoy each others company and love playing live.

I also write poems, so that is something that I really enjoy.

I grew up in a very musical family, my father was a musician and a big band leader and made records.

So one can say that I write all the time, that goes for the lyrics as well.

When you're a songwriter and you click with someone, you tend to want to keep writing with that person.

You know, I am just a musician and I have no idea these days what good and bad is in terms of labels.

So when bands work with me and it's 10 o'clock, usually you'd have to be getting out of the studio, we could go on until 2 in the morning cause it's my place!

Don't pay attention to what anyone is telling you about your personal journey just keep going, because that's what it's all about.

I've been trying to make records and I describe it almost like a "movie for your ears" where it's a little unconventional in its shape and form, but there's something that's intriguing in keeping you wanting to wait and see the next frame of film, except in here what's coming around the corner for your ears.

I started playing drums at a pretty early age because my parents were musicians. My dad was an amazing multi-instrumentalist and I can play a lot of instruments, but my dad actually played all the instruments I could play and then added another twenty five or thirty five different categories on there ...he was incredible! He got an act actually in Vegas, my parents Bobby and Phyllis Sherwood.

You have to let your music be true and then people who want to adopt it as that, they take it on and they love it, and it changes their world.

Yes was without a singer at that point, cause they were doing ABWH, so you had ABWH, and then you had the 90125 band without a singer.

Don't listen to what anyone tells you about the kind of music you make. Just make it! Be yourself, make your own music, and be totally true to your art. Because it's kind of a selfish thing to be an artist.

So I'm actually in the process of building another studio of my own in my house, taking over a wing of the house.

I was so influenced by Yes then that things started to sound very much like Yes.

And when I heard Yes, U.K. and Gentle Giant it was something that really got me interested. And those influences has stayed with me.

It's like: you could be driving in a Porsche or in a Jaguar, you're still gonna get to the same destinations. It's just how you choose to drive them.

All the artists involved poured their hearts and soul into this body of work and it shows. It is with the utmost respect to Pink Floyd that we took the challenge,