Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's hard to talk about childhood trauma. It's hard to talk about depression. It's hard to talk about anxiety. And we thought - I wonder if we just open up our subconscious and the things that we think about and hide from people every day and just let them come out in some of these lyrics.
I think most bands probably peak on their first album. We peaked on our third album. On the first album, I feel like I wish the production was a little better. I'll always hear a song I don't like. I look for what I could have done to make it better. It's always difficult for me to listen.
The reality is that a consumer culture which chucks out its iPhones for a new version every nine months is completely unsustainable, because Earth has already reached the tipping point. The General Strike attempts to personalize these issues and encourage listeners to look for a new model.
One thing I've noticed over the years is that young players - I mean 10- and 12-year-olds - really like my guitar style. There's something in my guitar style that they totally can latch onto and learn quickly, and then go from there to your Yngwie Malmsteens or your Steve Vais or whatever.
I quit drugs before I quit drinking because drugs were taking their toll on me. I was sick of the headaches and the puking and the shitting blood. I figured I'd stop everything but alcohol, but then I overcompensated with drinking. Now I'm totally clean because I don't choose to do either.
I know it is common nowadays for artists to start labels but this is a thoroughly constructed vehicle for inspired talent. This is a market that we've been living, breathing and eating for our entire lives - one where a huge void currently exists. Favored Nations is a long-term commitment.
I have about four different endeavors I'm going after right now. They all excite me in different ways. I'm all about keeping as many irons in the fire as possible. I'm writing music, trying to write a book (aren't we all?), putting a festival together, speaking... It keeps life interesting.
I don't organize myself sufficiently to get an album of material together, book the studio, and go. I need to be kicked; I need to be forced physically to go in. That's how it works for me. I'll get a great idea in the house, and it'll stay there unless somebody comes and drags it out of me!
Sometimes I'll hear a certain approach that kinda cathes my ear, like „It's kinda cool what that guy's doing there", or maybe an effect that somebody's using, or a guitar sound, or something that kinda makes me open up. But the funny thing is i realise over time how sort of traditional i am.
I'm realizing this more and more that it's one thing to get involved with your own political beliefs and stand behind you believe in personally. But as far as bands doing that in a way where they think they're going to fight the government, the only people they're really hurting is the fans.
One of the main things I look for in a guitarist is in the sound itself. I go for a certain sound, and I think it's an important thing for making a player more identifiable in the big giant pool of musicians out there. You want a sound that people will recognise just as much as your playing.
I have a lot of experience in playing all sorts of venues. And one of my interests is to understand what constitutes the vibe of a place and what makes one concert different from another. You can't fully measure or calculate these things, yet they are absolutely evident once you're on stage.
The reality is that a consumer culture which chucks out its iPhones for a new version every nine months is completely unsustainable, because Earth has already reached the tipping point. 'The General Strike' attempts to personalize these issues and encourage listeners to look for a new model.
It's very professionally done, very clever songwriting. I like Backstreet Boys more than 'N Sync, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, it's all very well done stuff. Much better than the Partridge Family and New Kids On The Block. I took my kids to see Backstreet Boys live and they flipped out
Some hit songs are really stupid, and who knows why they're hits. But a lot of hit songs are really good. I agree with Jim [Lauderdale] in that I think the really good ones are songs that when you hear it [sic]...there's just something about it that touches your heart, and you don't know why.
Of course when you are a kid you listen to what your parents had around. A lot of gospel, jazz. Now when I started to listen to music on my own it was around the time of the birth of rock and roll. Shortly thereafter I started to get into more blues and more traditional rootsy American music.
I've spent a lot of Thanksgivings on the road with my band, so anytime that I can spend Thanksgiving with my family in a traditional aspect, eating sweet potatoes and cranberries and stuffing and all the trappings of Thanksgiving and then get on a treadmill the next day extra long, I'm happy.
Having solidarity is important and having conviction and sticking with it and also consistency. You can't just have one good record, or a couple of good singles, you have to continue making good music to be considered to be a great band. Having some degree of integrity, that's it in one word.
Jordan [Ruddes], he learned that way, and that's what he knows how to do. That's how he kind of approaches all music, whether it's to learn a cover song that we're going to play, or to review Dream Theater music - he always uses charts. That's what he knows. I really rely a lot more on memory.
The one thing I've always done, because I like the sound of my guitar from where I sit - meaning not in front of it - so what I do is, I put microphones around my ears. I have them around my head, too. I don't know if it's a superstitious thing, but it's actually how I recorded my first album.
Going through the grief period of my dad and losing him - that was the worst thing because you know when you get that call. When you are seven, eight years old, you have that almost vision in your mind of what that's going to be like and what your going to feel like and it doesn't prepare you.
The blues scale was the first thing I learned. It's just a pentatonic scale with a flat seventh and a few notes that sound cool when you bend them. And because people have amalgamated the blues into this rock-blues scale, if you're using it, you better sound like a real authentic blues player.
I strongly encourage listening to the radio to hear something you haven't heard before. It's a very healthy thing to do. It's strange: unless you reload your iPods every couple of weeks, you're listening to and recycling the same music all of the time. I'm serious. Listen to your radio station.
I was reading a magazine when I was a little kid, probably about twelve years old, and an ad said that if you sell so many jars of Noxzema skin cream, we'll sell you a ukulele. So I went out and banged on doors in the snow in Quincy, Massachusetts, where I was raised, and I sold the skin cream.
The thing with food is that you can give 20 people the same recipe and the same ingredients, and somebody's going to make it better than somebody else, and that's the creativity of it. It's like music. You could have a bunch of people playing the same piece, and somebody's gonna play it better.
I don't pay attention. I don't read stuff or message boards because you definitely get affected. You can read a hundred great comments, amazing comments, and have one bad one and that is all you can focus on and it wrecks your day. It says something about negativity and how it draws us somehow.
You have to have a sound that inspires you to play because, if not, you won't be able to make the sound you have work. You won't be able to make magic with it if you're not happy with it, so it's important that you at least please yourself to the level where you can just relax and be an artist.
As far as favorite tunes, 'You Know You Know' is one, and why it is important is difficult to say. The rhythmic cycle is very interesting and challenging to play, since it can be considered three bars of 4/4 or four bars of 3/4. 'The Dance of Maya' is another, and I have to mention 'Sanctuary.'
I love the old stuff that's why I included it. I did see them play a lot as they supported the Banshees all the time. And I was a friend of the Banshees so I used to get there early to see the Ants and while the Banshees were on I used to like to go in their dressing room and steal their booze!
We had a nightmare on our first album, and went through two producers. I decided, on the second album, to take the money that we were supposed to use for pre-production, and we went into a studio and cut the album with no producer. We finished the whole thing without telling the record company.
When you make music you do it for the right reason: love. Love is the desire of well being, desire to heal the wounded, the person in pain, the person who has problems - to touch the person who needs love. The love inside you manifests through sound, vibration and embraces everyone in the room.
Being a professional musician doesn't mean you spend 12 hours a day playing music. It means you spend up to 12 hours a day taking care of business, dealing with litigation, with the various characters who've stolen your interests, or fending off hostile lawsuits from former members of the band.
I just think that there is something that keeps us together, to keep doing what we're doing. I can't really put my finger on it other than each record is like a little snapshot of my life at that particular moment, the way I play, the way I sound, the way I wrote, the way I sing, I can hear it.
I want to entertain my audience. I know when then come and see me play, if I don't do 'Swing Town,' 'Jet Airliner,' 'Take the Money and Run,' 'True Fine Love,' 'Fly Like an Eagle,' 'The Joker,' blah blah blah - if I don't do all those songs, they'll be extremely disappointed. I love to do them.
When I practise scales I will play four notes on one string. If I'm playing a C major scale, starting on F, I'll play the F, G, A, and B on one string and the C will be on the A string, etc, etc. Because I found not only was it good for my hands but it was really good for interconnecting things.
My favorite country blues player was Big Bill Broonzy. City blues was Freddie King, but I liked them all - Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Ralph Willis, Lonnie Johnson, Brownie McGhee and the three Kings, B.B., Albert and Freddie. Jazz-wise, I listened to Django, Barney Kessel and Wes Montgomery.
That's the beauty of creativity. It comes from the ether. I like to think, sometimes, it's like I haven't written it, it's more like I just reached up and grabbed it from somewhere. That song, 'Song of the Red Rock Mountain,' is one of them. I recorded it and thought, 'Where did that come from?'
I want to be taken seriously as the type of musician that plays stuff like an electric rake. I mean, how seriously do you take someone like Spike Jones? They take him pretty seriously - a really good musician who made a great contribution in terms of humor, which is part of what I try to do too.
If I'm not in an environment where I can record, it's great to be able to write something down, to be able to know how to do that, to be able to write notation. You grab a piece of paper and there it is. It's the cheapest recording equipment you can buy: a piece of manuscript paper and a pencil!
I can't expect everybody to appreciate what we do. Our stage shows especially have been kind of polarizing. Either you went with it or you didn't, and you thought we were being pretentious. Personally, I think it's kind of boring when I watch a band that doesn't do anything to make it their own.
If you're 14 and you're skinny, you can't be on the football team, basically. It's just not even really possible. But skating is something that you can do that gets that athletic urge satisfied, but you get to do it on your own terms. You can be as ballsy as you want to be. It was perfect for me.
Another guitar player who had a tremendous influence on my life was Howard Roberts ... I'd listened to a lot of Tal Farlow, Johnny Smith and Kenny Burrell, and I was certainly into those guys, but I was awestruck at the intensity and fire in Howards' guitar playing... for me, it became a roadmap.
Most of the time, I write songs with the arrangements all at once, in my head. There's the producer side of me that's always thinking sounds, like, 'Wouldn't this be a great sound if it existed to put in front of a song, to open it up, and then, when it did its thing, something else would happen?
In 1977, I had Paul Rivera hotrod six Fender Deluxes for me. At that time, a lot of studio guys in L.A. were using those - not so much live guys but studio guys. They had terrific tone and great technique, and I was like, 'Well, I like having terrific tone even though I don't have any technique.'
Rock 'n' roll guitar came from blues guitar. It was the blues guys who first turned the amp up and started whacking on the Stratocaster and a Les Paul. It wasn't the country guys and it wasn't the white guys; it was the Blues guys. That's where the real fire is in all of this rock and roll music.
We'll go out and we'll be playing in front of 15,000 people and say, 'Hey, we're going to do three new songs from something we just recorded' and 5,000 people get up and go get a hot dog and a beer and they don't come back until they hear the opening strings of 'The Joker' or 'Fly Like an Eagle.'
One thing people always ask me is 'How do you play outside?' ... I have no idea how to teach that, but when I was discussing this with our bass player Jesse Murphy, he said 'tell them to go cliff diving'... In other words, when you're jamming, you have to take risks if you want to find new sounds.
Going on You Tube, you see a lot of my videos. And I'm glad; there's numbers there. And I get this all the time, that when I'm actually in concert, there's a whole new level to it. There's this whole new energy level. It's hard to describe. But I just love to play, and I never take it for granted.
Ritchie Blackmore was a huge early influence on me, but after that I had to find my own way ... Johann Sebastian Bach was probably the most influential guy ever on me ... Vivaldi, Beethoven and eventually Paganini ... all of a sudden I was thinking in all these other areas, instead of blues riffs.
When I play guitar, it's automatic. I don't try to do something; I just do it. And it's already so ingrained in what I do, I don't think about it. I don't try to do something - I just do it. And the more I do it that way, the more I surprise myself. And if I surprise myself, that's the best thing.