Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I don't spend much time listening to the records when they're done. Usually I let go of it. Especially in the Eighties and Nineties - they were like product, almost.
It's easy to put on a Deep Purple record and say, 'That sounds great.' But why? Part of it is individual practice, but by playing together, a talent of meshing happens.
I really didn't like 'Done With Mirrors.' I really didn't like 'Just Push Play.' Then there are other records I really think were good for their time, like 'Toys and Rocks.'
AC/DC is a prime example of taking that blues rock thing and just living in that world. They only really move the furniture around a little on each album, but it still works.
Some of the best rock riffs ever written were by Jimmy Page, and I can't really name the songs, but some of the stuff he did on his first and second records is beyond brilliant.
If you take your last album & try to copy it, then thats sure to hell the way to stagnation. And that makes me bored...and if I'm bored then the music is boring and so are the band!
Rhythm and sex go together and that's where I come from as far as the music goes. Rag Doll and Love In An Elevator are such sexual songs that you put them on & the strippers go NUTS!
I've always felt you are only as good as your next album or next show. What you've done is done. When you get a gold record, you hang it on the wall, and then it's like, 'Yeah, next?'
People spend their careers trying to figure out what makes a hit single. But I learned a long time ago that you can't anticipate what people want, because it's always going to change.
L.A. was just an inspiring kind of place to be. It felt like going to Paris in the Twenties and Thirties. Everybody's there. Everybody's hanging around. Everybody's talking about music.
'Back In The Saddle' - I never realised what a good riff that was, or at least how much it satisfied me. And when we play it live, it comes across much better than I ever expected it to.
I guess we all have a bad night now and then and really screw up. I listened to our earlier stuff and we screwed up a lot. But at least now that we are sober, when we screw up it's for real.
That's what I love about music. It's immediate. There's a connection whether you are playing at Hyde Park or Chicago, and it's been happening since the beginning of time and the troubadours.
India brings out so many different feelings in me. I've been fascinated with India and Indian culture as long as I can remember - ever since the '60s with the Beatles and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
The Beatles just changed everything right across the board. They just had that right combination of clean-cut good looks - a cute band - but under that they had a real rock n roll thing going on.
The Beatles just changed everything right across the board. They just had that right combination of clean-cut good looks - a cute band - but under that they had a real rock n' roll thing going on.
The great British blues guitarists of the Sixties - people like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Peter Green - could play like virtuosos, but they also understood the importance of energy and intensity
I think that's really important, that kids get exposed to music as soon as they can - not necessarily to become musicians, but at least have an outlet. It's an art form that's easily accessible to young ears.
I collect firearms, and I've got a Winchester, an Indian rifle. It has tacks for every warrior that was shot, like notches on a pistol, and it's got feathers and beads hanging off it. It's like a work of art.
Maybe you could put it out there that I don't have a built-in dislike of ballads. That was kind of the reputation I had back in the Seventies. But I've come around. Ballads have become something of an acquired taste.
When I got sober and started working out, I fell into that trap of working out too much. I know a lot of guys can relate to that - if you don't get that runner's high every day, you feel like, 'Oh my God, I'm losing it.'
I'm a Republican, but I'm a Republican from the old school. I was taught that you get what you put into it. You can be anything you want to be if you work hard enough at it, and you can earn your place. That's the old way.
When I plug in my guitar and play it really loud, loud enough to deafen most people, that's my shot of adrenaline, and there's nothing like it. That's what it's always been for me - to be the flame the tribe dances around.
The bottom line is fans just want to hear a good song. Some people will look underneath to see who wrote it, but they just want to hear a good song. And if they don't hear it, they're not going to buy it just because you wrote it.
Berry's On Top is probably my favorite record of all time; it defines rock and roll. A lot of people have done Chuck Berry songs, but to get that feel is really hard. It's the rock and roll thing-the push-pull and the rhythm of it.
The Beatles had some juice when it came to distortion, but Clapton was finally able to break through those early studio engineers' fear of overloading. He defined the sound that guitarists spend the rest of their lives trying to get.
I've been going long enough to prove what I wanted to prove, to get the girl I wanted to get, to make the money I wanted to make, to drink all the beer I wanted to drink. I've played - not exactly everywhere, but I've played enough places.
The Beatles did everything long before anyone else. They weren't afraid to try things and to experiment with a lot of sounds. In 200 years, when you look up 'rock and roll' in the dictionary, it'll have a picture of the Beatles next to it.
Every time I get in front of an audience, I do the best I can. I really don't look at it like, you know, 'This is gonna be this crowd, or that crowd.' If anything, I think about the demographics only because of what songs will entertain more than others.
Sometimes when a record's done, I'm satisfied and I won't listen back to it for a while 'cause I'm usually pretty tired of the songs. Then I've got to learn them again to play them live, and sometimes it takes a while to realise it's a really good record.
It seems ridiculous that you can be in one state with your driver's license and buy a firearm, and then in the next state it is totally illegal. There are real problems to that, but as soon as you bring up the subject and say 'gun control,' it sets a red flag.
I know that some of the great painters and some of the great artists didn't even start to 'peak', as you say, till they were in their fifties and sixties. And God knows, history is full of artistic people that weren't even recognized till they were dead and gone.
After a while, no matter how much you love any pop song, you're going to get tired of it. That's the way it is with any entertainment. It's good when you first hear it or see it, you like it for a while, then it gets old. It gets chewed up and spit out and it's done.
Whenever I hear somebody cover a song, I don't like to hear it stray too far from the original. I like to hear some of the new energy that a band will put into it, but you kind of want to hear some of the basic parts of the song. I mean, that's what makes it the song that you like.
Steven and I stood on the stage at the Boston Garden after the Stones had just played there and the stage was still up. We had been playing cards, maybe a high-school dance, to 400 or 500, maybe a thousand. We just stood on the stage and thought, 'Well,man,maybe someday.' In 4 years that was OUR stage.
Five years after Aerosmith got back together, I realized how fragile we are as humans. There was a time I thought we were bulletproof, but then things happened and I came to the realization that I had to play every gig as if it was my last show. You have to start thinking that way, because you never know what's going to happen next.
It's so important for people to pay attention to history and learn from it, because it's the only thing we've got that's going to help us figure out where we are going. Especially the way things are manipulated in the press today. You have to sort through so much stuff to figure out what is real and what is not. It gets harder every day.
My Portuguese uncle had a Portuguese version of a ukulele. The family would pull it out after dinner and play Portuguese folk songs on it. I couldn't wait for him to finish so I could get my hands on it. I was seven or eight years old. And he used to have a Fender amp in his house and an electric guitar. I would spend hours making sounds.
I know that the gift that God gave me isn't gonna just wither up and die unless I let it die, so it's a matter of me having the faith that it's gonna come out. Whether or not the public's gonna like it is another story. But I think as long as I keep changing and sticking to what I really love - and the same goes for Steven and the other guys in the band - then people are gonna like it.