Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm not a good guitar player.
I like soundtracks and I like film.
I'm not into solos, I'm into lyrics.
Doing the stereotypical solo bores me.
I seriously do not think Nirvana is grunge.
I think people like Steve Vai are so boring.
I've never worried about how long the song is.
Fine art is really something I want to get into.
I use Gibson guitars; I prefer the Les Paul custom.
All the art for Tool is done by the me and the band.
I've always dabbled on guitar, but never took lessons.
I've always been involved in the visual arts and music.
I'm not a geek about equipment, I just know what I like.
We're more into expressing ourselves than making radio hits.
I haven't listened to much music lately; I've been out of it.
My approach is to be part of a band that makes music, not hit songs.
I played violin and got into that Suzuki program in the second grade.
We have meetings with our record label to tell them how to market us.
I'm a self-taught guitarist, but I have a classical music background.
Many of the songs on Undertow were written at the time Opiate came out.
If I play anything that sounds like a solo, it's gonna sound like a lyric.
I'm my own worst critic and I think everyone in the band is a perfectionist.
With four perfectionists in the band, we have a hard time reaching perfection.
We wanted to take as much time and effort making the video as we did the song.
That's what I love about our music - it'll never be a hit because you can't dance to it.
When we played with the Rollins Band, we'd keep songs going until we felt like ending it.
I'm a bass player from way back and Paul is a guitar player and we've been in many bands.
As far as the grunge thing, there are three bands from Seattle that I would call true grunge.
I listen to Helmet - and I love Helmet, they're a great band - but every song sounds the same.
I think putting labels on people is just an easy way of marketing something you don't understand.
But if you want to be in a band and write music, then you should just be in a band and write music.
I personally don't like to use as many effects because when you play live, something always goes wrong.
That's the thing I like about my sound. It's real raw and very unsafe compared to a solid state kind of sound.
When you don't know what the band looks like, it puts the emphasis on thinking and taking the music and message more seriously.
In the time between records, I always have lots of stuff going on. I shoot photography, make little sculptures, play video games.
Different people get different things out of the images. It doesn't matter what it's about, all that matters is how it makes you feel.
I never thought 'Stairway to Heaven' was a long song. I loved how there was this part and then there was another part that was completely different.
If you're making music for all the right reasons, people are going to be receptive to that and appreciate it the same way you did when your were writing it.
There's always the influence of music, film, art and the other things that drive me. I'm usually inspired by my environment and whatever is making me happy or mad.
I really like stuff that is collectible that you can hold and go, 'There's only a few people that have this.' I like to see that someone's put a lot of labor into making something.
We could have gone with much bigger labels and more money, but we wanted to go with a company that is LA based, all in the same building, and really understands what the artists want.
Everyone in Tool is interested in how we present our music. We write a group of songs that have a vibe, energy and feeling, and then we try to pick an image to capture that and communicate a feeling. We want something that adds to the connection with the audience.