Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The drive to create music that is pure is my highest priority. Sometimes I'll get extremely technical, and other times I'll just kind of go with the gods of music.
There's always a personal satisfaction in writing a song by yourself. You get the inspiration, and see it through, and you're done. It's focused and very personal.
Take away all the emotional baggage of any band's fight, be it The Beatles or The Stones, but in the end, you just enjoy the creativity. That's what the legacy is.
We are taking close to $10 a CD the way we are doing it, and I think that is a fair amount to split up between five guys. Each of us makes like two bucks a record.
My will power has always been very strong. If I want something, I'll get it. I've had no trouble keeping my head on my shoulders, nor do I have any chips on there.
Forget about every other lesson in the book. You have to be able to tap your foot or else none of what you doing you are not gonna have any control of your symptom.
I discovered that it was a lonely world being a solo artist. Then I started working with another solo artist, Rod Stewart, and he used to tell me how lonely he was!
Im better for it and I prefer to keep things simple and see what sounds I can get out of my head and hands rather than relying on a sound that someone else created.
If the guitar synthesizer is really going to stand as a synthesizer on its own, it needs to develop a more characteristic sound; I don' think it's gotten there yet.
If we really wanted to be cool, and everyone in the world had Pro Tools, we could just put it up on the internet and everyone could make their own record out of it.
There's nothing like a music festival. People are ready to have a good time. I don't think anyone comes to a festival going, 'I'm gonna be a complete bummer today.'
When you really think about it, I'm not delusional enough to think that what I do is important to life as we know it on this planet. No. But neither is what you do.
Wealth for its own sake is an empty shell. Wealth that includes making other people's lives better will reward you even more than the beautiful mansion you live in.
By and large, Americans close their ears to anything not in English. That's stupid because there's some great music around the world that we should be listening to.
I still think the best metal bands have a blues feel. The first Black Sabbath album is kind of a bludgeoning of blues. Deep Purple also started out as a blues band.
You have to keep the business side together as well as the creative side. We have constantly surprised people and stayed with bands until they have grown on people.
The love you have for your kids is so overwhelmingly powerful that it alters your perspective. The dark things going on in the world become very poignant and vivid.
London is a dead duck, as far as innovative new music is concerned, unless you want to have your head blown off with some outrageous, rubbish, pounding dance music.
Only because The Runaways were my baby and there's no reason to get it back together except to totally have fun. If that's not the goal, then I don't want to do it.
As far as my solo record, I don't want a gold record or anything, I'm happy to be small and to have the people appreciate the music who really like me for being me.
I somehow always found the right people on my own to jam with as well as playing with all my buddies. I didn't get to a point where I was auditioning for any bands.
I'm grateful that as part of the Ernie Ball family, I'm able to connect with my fans in such a meaningful way and hopefully inspire guitar players to up their game!
When I was about 12, I knew I wanted to be a musician. The blues had so much emotion and so much feeling; if you don't have that, you're not going to be good at it.
You don't really write a hit song - you write a great song, and then, if the public decides it's a hit, they take over from there. The song becomes its own monster.
America is a business. If you can't afford to do something, no matter how much bellyaching everybody does I'm so sorry, if you can't afford it, you shouldn't do it.
What we've realized is, for us to be happy for the long haul, we have to keep doing what we want to do, or else we won't want to play music with each other anymore.
With the search for the Higgs, we're involved with 5% of the visual universe, and now we have 95% of the invisible universe that's coming into view. That's amazing.
A lot of those little things that I really like doing are just moments of cool articulation, just little moments of phrasing that probably go over everybody's head.
The chances of a reunion now are less likely. I was thinking of having a 40th anniversary of the band, but now they are really another band, so it's all a bit weird.
It was by listening to Goodman's band, that I began to notice the guitarist Charlie Christian, who was one of the first musicians to play solos in a big band set-up.
I'm better for it and I prefer to keep things simple and see what sounds I can get out of my head and hands rather than relying on a sound that someone else created.
We deliberately used elements from Brazilian music and from African and Asian music. Now people can hear that but then it sounded so abstract, they couldn't hear it.
The least punk thing I ever did was open a money market account. Blue chip stocks. Mutual funds. They're a very safe and dependable way to grow your money long-term.
In high school I was a jazz nerd, listened to a lot of Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk and stuff like that. Maybe in Harry Pussy I was listening to more horn players.
It's not about how loud you turn the amp up. That's not what makes it sound big. What makes it sound big is fooling around with different delays and reverb settings.
I just loved the guitar when it came along. I loved it. The banjo was something I really liked, but when the guitar came along, to me that was my first love in music
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.
When I went into this, I knew that public life was going to be a very weird, fantastic and cruel sort of situation to be in. I think I'm ready for any lumps to come.
I practice all the scales. Everyone should know lots of scales. Actually, I feel there are only scales. What is a chord, if not the notes of a scale hooked together?
In order to become a well-rounded musician, you have to master the three major aspects of guitar playing: the technical side, the musical side and the creative side.
I was in Sweden for 10 days. They put me on the front page of the daily papers eight days in a row. I did nothing to warrant any of the attention. It was ridiculous!
I was in Sweden for 10 days. They put me on the front page of the daily papers eight days in a row. I did nothing to warrant any of the attention. It was ridiculous.
Quite often, I have to work hard to improve my technical capacity, if you will, before the demands of a new work come within reach. And I find that very stimulating.
The only problem I've had with my Vox wah is its tendency to move around on the floor. So now it sits on a rubber mat that says in big letters, 'Kirk's Wah-Wah Rug.'
If you play the very subtle jazz tunes with acoustic pianos, acoustic bass and it's a dead standard, you are going to play very differently. It depends on the music.
The principle element in a performance is risk, and if you're losing interest then by scaring yourself to death the audience will feel it and boy it'll wake them up.
At age ten I switched to guitar, and I've loved the instrument ever since. And I love to practice. I just do. I just love guitar. It still brings a smile to my face!
I've always been a guy who's pretty supportive, its just my nature, so I came in to the situation with the attitude that I wanted to support Johnny and make it work.
They used to complain at school that I looked out of the window for long periods of time - that sums up my life. I like to look out the window, do nothing, daydream.
You see, we are here, as far as I can tell, to help each other - our brothers, our sisters, our friends, our enemies. That's to help each other, not hurt each other.