Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Democracy in the studio is overrated. What you wind up getting is compromise on everybody's part, which means that nobody has their way, and that means nobody wins, including the fans.
Don't look over your shoulder and don't use or abuse others to get ahead. Keep your eyes focused on your goals and keep working for what you believe in and what you want to accomplish.
I always hated watching bands: the guy would break a string or be out of tune, and I have perfect pitch, so it would always tick me off when a guy is up there, and he'd break a string.
I can't deny that Eric Clapton's and Eddie Van Halen's lead stuff has influenced a stack of people, but for me, it's the rhythm thing that's way more impressive and important to a band.
In a way, I feel it might be ill-mannered to try and top myself. The music I play is a ritual. Something that matters to people in a special way. I wouldn't want to interfere with that.
Diversity is its most consistent characteristic....The characteristics of freely improvised music are established only by the sonic-musical identity of the person or persons playing it.
Growing up working with my dad, I really had no interest in doing the actual work, so I was always like drawing on the wood, doing stuff like that. It just has a real hands-on approach.
I guess I would say true happiness is to love and be loved. Of course, having enough money for food, shelter, health care and things like that all help, but that is more about security.
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.
I thought I'd be wasting my time to go to commercial record companies and make demos for them, because don't forget, I was doing what I was doing and nobody understood what I was doing.
To me music is the centre of the universe and the voice of the spirits and the voice of God and the voice of all the people who have lived and died...At least the ones I'm connected to.
I also became inspired by impressionist painters such as Renoir, and wanted to do the same sort of thing with music-portray whatever mood strikes me the way Keith Jarrett does on piano.
I think if you are writing an instrumental you are dealing with more of an aesthetic in a sense but a lyric is more of a putting yourself on the line and a much more expensive exercise.
When the audience is awful you can still have a great night and people will walk out thinking they had a great time even though there was loads of loudmouths and the sound was terrible.
I know life sometimes can get tough! And I know life sometimes can be a drag! But people, we have been given a gift, We have been given a road, And that road's name is... Rock and Roll!
Dropping the exclamation point was our way of drawing a line in the sand. We have a new record and we feel like a new band. We were all tired of it, and we went ahead and got rid of it.
The level of achievement that we have at anything, is a reflection, of how well, we were able to focus on it. Because the only thing that's holding you back, is the way you're thinking.
The simple truth is that in order to become good, you have to be obsessed. You have to put in an awful lot of time and hard work and couple that with desire and unflagging perseverance.
Mark Winchester has left the band. He's decided that he's tired of the road and just wants to concentrate on his career in Nashville. I don't blame him at all. He'll certainly be missed.
I don't think there is a musician today that hasn't been affected by Elvis' music. His definitive years - 1954-57 - can only be described as rock's cornerstone. He was the original cool.
'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.
Here is my theory on this one. If you write things down, if there is a mystery and you try and explain it, once you've written it down for permanent, in due time, it'll be proven stupid.
My entire life is dedicated to music, and at my age, that makes a lot of years! But all the work and dedication is only that I'm able to forget myself and let the music do the 'talking.'
I started doing up-and-down strumming, basically to keep time and to play fast. As time went on, I started realizing other guitar players couldn't do it. I always went against the grain.
I had to be reminded that the guitar is infinite. It never stops teaching you, it never stops being difficult; there's an unlimited amount of things to learn, and you'll never master it.
A good horror movie should have peaks and valleys, a good horror movie should move you emotionally; a good horror movie should be exciting to watch and energizing in a weird kind of way.
I used my mother's radio as a PA system. I'd take the telephone, the speaking part, and take those two leads off and lead them into the radio and the sound would come out of the speaker.
The guitar is of no great importance to me. The people it brings to me are what matter. They are what I'm extremely grateful for, because they are alive. The guitar is just an apparatus.
If you want to achieve something, you have to work a little harder and get out of your comfort zone. That is with everything: relationships, the band, music, athletics. All of the above.
This Classic Rock 'n Blues Tour / Hippiefest roster promises a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see some of the best, legendary artists of our lifetime. I can't wait to be a part of it.
I really feel fortunate to have been around then because there have been good and bad years in rock but the best years were '55 to early '61. I got to see Buddy Holly and everybody else.
Reps once took chances on art, History's most treasured musicians were believed in and cultivated to reach their potential. Today, it would be difficult for those musicians to get deals.
For me, I've never talked about my private life. It's always been about Black Sabbath. It's strange to open up and talk about me as a young lad, my relationships, marriages and what not.
I've been sober for two-and-a-half years, My children are happy. In August, my wife and I will celebrate our fifteenth wedding anniversary. My band is back together with a sold-out tour.
To some extent at that time, we injected rock and roll into that scene- we played loud and that was a huge turning point for that scene. We were involved in playing with all those people.
I had a guitar sitting around, and it just happened to have four strings on it, and I would sit around watching TV and playing it. I ended up writing bunches of songs around four strings.
I didn't connect with the kids. I was in the studio. I never saw the kids. I hoped they liked it, of course. And then I'd go write some more. And then I'd go buy me a home. Very American.
Sailing became one of the mainstreams of my life. I suppose my father was an influence. I remember seeing a photo of him at home sailing a big boat to Bermuda in his 20s. I still have it.
I don't mean this to sound pretentious but I think that artists of all kinds are a rung up the ladder of the spiritual heirarchy, and for me there is something very religious about music.
I was taking a nose dive somewhere between eleven and twelve because my sister had died and I was practicing something that siblings do which is follow in their footsteps and die as well.
I can't really say enough about Chris Potter. He is one of the greatest musicians I have ever known, and every second I have been on the band stand with him has been an absolute pleasure.
I've demanded respect for myself and my band and my peers, I've demanded full artistic control for my music, I advocate for artists and music education wherever I can. And I'm a nice guy.
Growing up in Dallas, my first influences on the guitar were T-Bone Walker and Les Paul. T-Bone taught me how to play lead guitar behind my head and do the splits in 1951 when I was nine.
It's one that still happens, actually... forgetting a part of a difficult piece. Usually, the chances of it happening are directly proportional to how quiet and attentive the audience is.
Usually, the best thing is when the band goes to the bar and gets the corner table, we sit there like kings, and then they bring people to us. It's just rock 'n' roll. It's stupid, really.
I wanted to play rock and roll when I started playing. Nobody at that time ever thought about songwriting. You sang songs, that's all. You sang other people's songs. That's all there were.
Gene Krupa was my big hero, and I used to play on my mother's flour cans and sugar cans with the kitchen knives, listening to the big bands on my dad's records. Gene Krupa and Harry James.
And I'd like to leave quite a few friends behind and I hope I will. Other than that, I don't want nobody putting me on a pedestal when I leave here. I'm just one of the people ... just me.
When I got my first guitar, I played along with everything I heard that had guitar in it, like the Ramones, Nirvana and Sublime, as well as whatever hip-hop and R&B stuff was on the radio.
What is so important is that you play for the artist and for the record and for the song ... everything else falls into place ... my solo has to be a complement to the singer and the song.