Greg Saunier Quotes

When it comes down to intuition, when it comes down to gut feelings about whether a song is right, you can get distracted with words, rationalization. There's nothing wrong with music school, but part of music school has to be the ability to forget all of it, too.

It's weird to me to even say, "I wrote this song." I never feel like I wrote it; I feel like I heard it.

I play drums, and I'd recommend it to anyone, except maybe your neighbors. It's great exercise - physical, mental, emotional, and social. It takes deep concentration but also activates concentration. If you're doing it right, it's always just a little harder than what you can actually pull off.

I love love. Growing up, I always thought it was a state, and I'd wait for it to appear. Now I think it's an activity, a skill, something you strive to create. A constant conversation between emotion and imagination and flesh.

Almost everything that gets called "universal truth" or "common sense" is actually cultural. And too easily twisted into justifications for all kinds of behavior.

I'm against American corporations buying politicians to remove limits to greed, capitalizing on other people's misery, actively creating misery on which to capitalize, "financializing" every moment of our enslaved lives. Then when China or somebody takes over, then it will be [them] doing those things that I'll be against.

I'm not unswayed by the opinions of others. I actually really value that, the idea that you can feel things the way somebody else might feel them is a really big part of doing music for me.

I've learned it's a human responsibility to create fun, not just wait for it.

Pop music is the one genre that isn't a genre. If the kids like it, then that's what defines it as pop music. Pop music is just something new.

I guess a lot of bands play around until they come up with something they like.

Usually if someone starts making universal claims, I tune right on out.

There's part of me that feels a privilege not to do music, but to do what everybody should be allowed to do, which is to do what you're driven to do.

The only way the band could make any money was by going on tour. But going on tour meant we had to get time off from our jobs, and we couldn't get enough time off to make enough money from touring to survive, so the only way to try was to quit our jobs. None of us had a job that was so wonderful that we were just dying to keep it.

When we play, every day is different. All three of my bandmates surprise me all the time.

It's amazing to think that there must be this river of ideas constantly rushing inside of a person, and once you've somehow found a path into it, then it's just there, whether you will it to be or not.

It's a great privilege to be able to play that much. When you play a lot, you can be really detail-oriented.

There were no rules. There's no guide to follow. I would just trust my instincts for some unknown reason. Something inside me would say, "This guitar is not loud enough," and I wouldn't know why. You never know how to reach that point until you've reached it.

My projects are just side effects of what I obsess over, what I chat about, what random things pop into my head, what I dream at night.

That's one of the things that always grabbed me about rock music: There's a song, and you know how it goes, and you can sort of predict it, but a lot is left up to chance and interaction.

I'm always looking to disprove what I think I know for sure. I call that learning.

It's very heartening to see people who I used to do music with still doing it.

I try not to think about the drums themselves. If I do, I'll end up hitting myself in the head with a drumstick, or sustaining some weird injury.

What's great about going on tour is that it immediately unburdens me of those self-centered misconceptions. Because suddenly, with these songs you've been obsessed with for months, you're playing them for hundreds of people.

I'm a rock-and-roll drummer, so my job is to create chaos.

What most people call "chaos" is actually incredibly predictable and maddeningly boring - greed, close-mindedness, warring over power.

When I'm playing best, I'm just thinking about the music, just interacting with what my bandmates are playing.

I've got childhood friends who are working for non-profit foundations, or who are running for state senate and doing things that actually do fight evil in this world. And what am I doing? I bang on some drums in a rock band. I try to tell myself that by doing that, I'm fighting evil - which is completely absurd. Music is not equipped in any way to fight against anything. Other than, I guess, it could fight against silence.

When it's time to write a new song, anything that you thought you understood last time is pretty much pulverized.

I have music in my head; I can't help it. You can put a gun to my head and it's not going to go away. The privilege is that I'm not being prevented from following that.

In American commercials in the past year or two, I don't know, the singers all sound like they're whining and the music's all melancholy. It's sort of like, I hear these commercials and it makes me feel sad, you know? Like - for instance, my barley tea is gone. Now, there's music out there that encourages you, when your barley tea has run out, to just sort of sit there and be like "My tea ran out. Oh, man." And just be slouching. So we wanted to make music that when your tea runs out, instead you're like, "I'm gonna go get some more tea!" You know? It just gives you the energy.

Our music was meant to be motivational, we thought it would be interesting - when you have a breakup, or when you have hard times with your honey, you know, hard times in life, you can feel sad about it, or you can sometimes, take a dark time and make it, like, One lumen nicer, you know what I mean?

I've found that writing and playing music has so little to do with will, and so much to do with just finding what's there waiting for you.

I feel vulnerable when my ego is threatened - if I get jealous of another band's good time slot at a big festival, if I'm about to get clobbered in a political debate, if I'm trying to impress someone I have a crush on. It's the opposite of openness, letting go, allowing deep feelings to express themselves. For me, that comes from playing music and from kissing.