Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I was the lead singer in a lot of the bands I was in. You have to be comfortable. You gotta get up there and sell the song. You have to get up there and sell the lyric. You gotta be able to feel it.
With AC/DC, we've always started with rock, and we've just kept it going. The critic's view is always, 'They just made an album and it's the same as the last one.' I'll have fifteen of them, anytime.
We played by feel. We felt as though you could put us on any stage, and we would find a way to win that crowd over. We had that attitude: We can't fail. You might not like it right now, but you will.
I'm happy with the amount of success I've achieved. I feel like I'm getting better every day and I'm always learning. I don't take anything for granted and I've gained a deeper perspective on things.
I didn't look up and say, "Oh, man, if I learn how to play a guitar I could make not much money, but I'd make a decent living like Eric Clapton or somebody." There wasn't nothing like that out there.
David Bowie's music is a moving target. Just when you think you got the bullseye, it shifts. And to his credit, on to death, it's still shifting. David Bowie is a moving target, even after he's gone.
I still do a bit of this and a bit of that. Some brews and there's nothing wrong with a bud or two! I still do a bit of this and a bit of that. Some brews and there's nothing wrong with a bud or two!
I don't think so, in so far as I always aspired to play the way I do now but just couldn't get the sounds out always due to technical limitations - now I can pretty much play what I hear in realtime.
Rock stars are idiots. You know that! Remember this moron never went to music school, never learned music theory and can't read or write music. So why not be suspicious of everything this idiot says?
The Shins is, in a way, a recording project that turned into a live band. So I don't really keep myself beholden to any rules when I'm in the studio for Shins. I just gotta get it done as best I can.
I couldn't not play a Les Paul guitar. Les always used to point to my Strat and say, 'Why do you have that piece of crap around your neck?' I'd say, 'Yours are too heavy. I had to drill holes in it.'
We record Dream Theater shows and I'll sit on the bus and listen to my playing - what worked, what didn't. A lot of times it's embarrassing and humbling, but that's what you have to do to get better.
In finding love, I think it's important to be patient. In being in a relationship, I think it's important to be honest, to communicate, to respect and trust, and to strive to give more than you take.
Getting sequestered and not really knowing what to do with your time and then discovering, 'Oh, I can watch a bunch of horror movies' has probably played out in a lot of people's discovery of horror.
The difficult thing was deciding what to leave off! I just ultimately tried to strike a balance between what was interesting to hard core fans, and what was exciting to first timers and what I liked.
On tour, I'll get up at 5 p.m. and go to bed at 8 in the morning. With fishing, it's the exact opposite. Fishing is the only healthy thing I do. Touring is such a grind; it's the opposite of healthy.
It's always flattering when someone covers a song. I mean, when you're a young band, and you're unsigned - to think that someday people would want to cover one of your songs - it's just mind-blowing.
When I was young, I wasn't a misfit or anything. I had friends in all the different social groups. But I had issues - just personal issues, insecurities and other things that had happened in my life.
It's hilarious, because my guitar has what's known as a tremolo bar or a whammy bar. And the whammy bar is probably the most alien thing on my guitar that could possibly relate to a classical guitar.
I'm very comfortable singing myself, first of all. Secondly, there's a certain disconnect when you write the song and you have someone else sing it for you. And it's kind of like a fakeness about it.
With AC/DC, we've always started with rock, and we've just kept it going. The critic's view is always , 'They just made an album and it's the same as the last one.' I'll have fifteen of them, anytime.
The Lounge Lizards were relating with a tradition and it was like I was playing within a musical context. The guitar playing stood out as being different in some way. That was a real education for me.
I think it's a known fact that Joel and I have always loved Australia since we started coming here 13 or 14 years ago. Everyone knows we love it here. Our only concern is will we wear our welcome out?
Once you tie anger and ego together then you're a monster, at least a latent one. So you have to be able to separate those things before you are going to be able to do anything useful with your anger.
Now that I'm staring down the barrel of the last act of my life, I'm less excited about control and solo effort, and I resent the way the business aspects interfere with my space for creative writing.
I mean, no offense, but I don't really see why, like guitar players from Creed, or something like that, are on the cover of guitar magazines. Almost anybody can sit down and learn to play those songs.
Music can be so disturbing and frustrating. I mean the business side of it. The actual making music part is fun, but the business side of it is just so out of control, has nothing to do with anything.
Unless you took courses in architecture, engineering, or pre-med, the rest of your liberal arts education hardly prepares you for life as the business warrior and champion you envision yourself to be.
SST was formed to put out the first Black Flag record. Basically, there wasn't anyone else to do it. I felt that what I was doing with Black Flag was very worthwhile, and I wanted to get it out there.
I never really felt at home with that - the headbands, the roses, the feet, the peace sign, all that bollocks. That wasn't me at all; I felt like a fish totally out of water during the mid-'60s thing.
I am very happy to be alive. There is much fun to be had. Music, movies, books, paintings, drawingsI hope you have these things where you are. If you have them, what does the real world matter anyway?
There is really no spiritual message that I'm trying to convey with my music, it's just a personal thing. I really believe that the more personal we get, in a way, the more universal the implications.
I can only be me. I do what I do, I'm not a jazz player. ... I don't play jazz standards, at least not in any recognizable way. It's not my turf but I have plenty of respect for that style of playing.
I don't know of a guitar player that has only one guitar. They're never happy with one. I'm never happy with just one of them. I woke up and ended up with six, even if you can only play one at a time!
I was about seven or eight years old when I first heard West Side Story, and it had a huge impact on me. If you look at the elements of that record, it contains many of the things I enjoy doing today.
If you hit the front end on the right-hand side you could turn that one on by itself and if you hit on the left-hand side you could turn it on and off. And in the middle it was like serious overdrive.
I'm trying to write every day if I can. I think the idea is to try and chip away at it as opposed to just sit down one day and then turn it on like a flick of a switch and expect everything to happen.
It's a coup by the GOP to grab the governorship to California to make this place a safe haven for George W. Bush in 2004. It's incredible when you think about it. The recall cost the state $100 million
Because we grew up in Australia, to find information about a lot of blues guys, I used to go to the library and find the jazz magazines. They didn't even sell them at the time in news agents and stuff.
I always liked the double cutaway. It looked like two horns. It's like a red devil. So I went to the guitar shop, saw an SG that was sitting there looking rather lonely, and said, 'Hey, that's for me.'
There's a difference between music that's original and music that's retro. A lot of bands now are kind of retro 70s whether it's Kraut-rock or... I've heard people suggest that we're kind of retro 80s.
Well, I'm like most Americans, we don't vote by party, we both by the person because a person is bigger than the party, which is why sometimes the Democrats get in and sometimes the Republicans get in.
When they said there was gonna be about 100,000 people at Woodstock, and it went up to 200,000, I just blanked off and thought, 'I don't want to do this.' If they're filming it, it's too nerve-racking.
I didn't try out for bands when I was younger. I got into guitars intensely a couple of years into playing so much by the time I was graduating high school I was accepted into Berklee College of Music.
I'm not good enough to be playin' much acoustic guitar onstage. Man, you gotta get so right; I mean, the tones, the feel, the sound. Plus, acoustic blues guitar is just that much harder on the fingers.
It's true that the more you put in the more you get out and that has to be there I think, If you aren't really hooked on your instrument this job would be a hell on earth but if you are, it's the best.
The music has generated all the techniques I use. When I sit down to learn to play something . . . it is not because I want to master a technique. It is because I want to hear what an idea sounds like.
I was producing demos for a band that was called Physical Ed. Out of production of demos I went and did a few jam sessions with then in Northern California clubs, but I never actually toured with them.
I have an independent record label called Favored Nations on which I released an album by an artist called Johnny A, who plays an arch top Gibson through a Marshall, but the tone is all in his fingers.
It's a coup by the GOP to grab the governorship to California to make this place a safe haven for George W. Bush in 2004. It's incredible when you think about it. The recall cost the state $100 million.