Popular quotes about Band! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 14
The band? No way! There ain't no band. The band is not 'the band' right now. It's just three guys.
James HetfieldWhat does surprise me, though, is the amount of attention this band [Guns'n'Roses] has garnered 11 years after the original lineup broke up. That's an interesting phenomenon. It was even interesting back in the day. I mean, [we were] this glorified garage band. It was a great band, but it was not the kind of band you expected to become what it has.
SlashI pretty much built a band out of the most incredible guys I could possibly find. I didn't really want a six-piece band, but it just ended up being a six-piece band because these guys are all awesome.
Les ClaypoolA good analogy is stretching a rubber band. You can stretch and stretch and even feel the tension increase in the muscles in your hands and arms as the gap from one end of the band to the other widens. But at some point you reach the limits of elasticity of the band and it snaps. The same thing happens with human systems.
John L. CastiThe Smashing Pumpkins was never meant to be a small band. It was going to either be a big band, or a no band.
Billy CorganThe act of the being in the band has very little in common with writing songs. The songs come out of it, and the band is necessary for the songs to emerge, but the band doesn't exist just so the songs can emerge.
Tim KinsellaYou don't need to be talented. You don't even have to play the guitar to be a guitar player in a punk-rock band. So I, in a very naรฏve and teenage way, said, "That's it. I'm going to be in a band."
Michael StipeWe set out to become a band for our time. But sometimes if you do a good-enough job, you become a band for all time.
Glenn FreyWhen I was a kid, I was playing in various bands - amateur bands, garage bands, weekend bands, you name it, around the area. At some point, I just wanted to try the whole 'Beatle tribute band' thing, so I found a local band that was doing that.
Steve LandesYeah, after making Pablo Honey, we started experimenting with cloning myself in order to double the band's creative energy. However, the experiment was a failure, and the defective Thom Yorke clone escaped. And formed a band called Muse.
Thom YorkeWhen we started the band, I was really like, "We just want to make a lot of records" - not quite unlike Guided By Voices' schedule. I've always thought that our live thing is what we do best, and having a really robust, big catalog makes for the most interesting live band - especially with people, at this point, traveling to see us night after night. For us to have almost 100 songs to pull from is a really cool thing. The sets can be different. They can be invigorating on an intellectual level. I definitely hope to continue to release records at an accelerated pace.
Craig FinnI think I'm just trying to show a more mature side of the band and I think we've really come into the sound of our band. With every album we've grown, but I think this is just a really good picture of where we are right now and how we feel our music represents us. Under the thumb of other record companies we haven't had as much creative control and I think with this record we really did our own thing.
Jason C. MillerI brought the music out to L.A., and the producer Tommy LaPuma heard it and he said - "Man, I love it. Let's do it. Let's record it." I said, "Okay, where's the band?" He said, "We don't have a band. We want it to sound exactly like your demo." I said, "Well, I played all the instruments on the demo." You do that when you're making demos. You got your guitar, you got your sax. He said, "Well, I want it to sound just like that, so get all your instruments out here." So I ended up playing all the instruments.
Marcus MillerMy first big break was with the Ted Fio Rito band. Fio Rito had a bunch of record hits in the 1930s and did a lot of radio work back then. When he came to my home town in early 1942, I sat in with the band. Ted liked me and offered me a job.
Louie BellsonYou have to figure out as a band how a band becomes a business, and then you have to keep that business mentality separate from the creative one, which is good for the songs. It's always a work in progress.
David LongstrethRidley Pearson also plays bass guitar and sings with the Rock Bottom Remainders, a band made up of such successful authors as Amy Tan, Stephen King, and Dave Barry-a band that, according to Barry, "plays music as well as Metallica writes novels".
Otto PenzlerThe E Street band casts a pretty wide net. Our influences go all the way back to the early primitive garage music, and also, we've had everything in the band from jazz players to Kansas City trumpet players to Nils Lofgren, one of the great rock guitarists in the world.
Bruce SpringsteenYou know somethin', man? Some day I'm gonna be walkin' up the street one way and you're gonna be comin' down the other way, and we're gonna pass each other and I'm gonna say 'Hello, best white band in the world' and you're gonna say 'Hello, best colored band in the world.
Chick WebbWe'd started out as a garage band and it became like a huge band, which was fine. But everything was so magnified, drug addictions, personalities, it just became too much.
Izzy StradlinA lot of bands don't really like each other. I read an Interpol interview the other day, it was a really good interview because it was showing a different aspect of a band. They don't really like each other - they work together and they kinda exist together and that's how they like it. They're like, "we didn't get into this band looking for friends."
Benji MaddenYou are always kind of suspicious that there's a better life out there for you no matter what it is - and obviously being in a band for me was always what I wanted to do, it's the only thing that I can do, it's the only thing that gets me up in the morning, but you can't help but wonder what else you'd be doing if you weren't in the band.
Ryan JarmanSometimes the problem is not the people in the band, but the people around the band.
Roger Meddows TaylorI think first huge gay following started out with our keyboard player Jesper Anderberg. When he joined the band we were still in high school, and he was two years younger than us. He has a really boyish look, so all the gay guys fell in love with him straight away. We have a couple of cute guys in the band, and we play that kind of music that will go in a club. And I was dating a girl for a while - that might have something to do with it.
Maja IvarssonI've never treated anyone in my band like they're not on the same level as me. I'm not that kind of person. In the past, I have disrespected people in my band and that was my weakness. I think some people have a hard time understanding how I think.
Marilyn MansonWe'd rather be a band that some people are going to passionately hate than be a ringtone band.
Sam EndicottWhen I joined the band I didn't know any of the tunes, and when I left the band I didn't know any of the tunes!
Keith Jarrett"Anybody have money?" Frank checked his pockets. "Three denarii from Camp Jupiter. Five dollars Canadian." Hedge patted his gym shorts and pulled out what he found. "Three quarters, two dimes, a rubber band and - score! A piece of celery." He started munching on the celery, eyeing the change and the rubber band like they might be next.
Rick RiordanI moved to Manchester to join a band and ended up getting into acting, and I moved back to London to become an actor and ended up joining a band.
Jim SturgessI have a theory that musicians recognize each other and if they are destined to collaborate together they will. Mainly, they recognize each other according to the class they belong to. If they are punk-rocker kids from the neighborhood, they are going form a band. If they happen to be musicians that are going to play in pubs and restaurants, they are going to recognize each other, form a band and play together. If it's about musicians that are playing jazz and are going to jazz festivals, for e.g., then they are going to meet and work together.
Vlatko StefanovskiWhen you're in a young band for the first time, geographically you're in the same place and you tend to go out and socialize. You play more shows, you spend more time together. You're a unit. As you grow older, inevitably you develop a life outside the band. I think it would be tragic if you didn't.
Robert SmithWith Rock Band, you can play along to Black Sabbath or Nirvana and possibly find new ways of appreciating their artistry by being allowed to perform parallel to it. Rock Band puts you inside the guts of a song.
Carrie BrownsteinI actually think the band doesn't need the television show. And I actually think the television show holds it back. No one at radio wants to play a band that's on a television show.
Kendall SchmidtMy dream right now is - and I don't know how to do it, and I don't know if it will work exactly - but just this sort of vague aspiration to start some kind of website where people send in their stories or poems, and me or perhaps some other people turn that into music. And then by the end of the year we make a record and actually put it out. Like a band, but the band is actually a combination of the musician and the fan. I think that's a very 21st-century way of doing it.
Eef BarzelayBeing in a rock n' roll band was like being in a Sherman tank. Nothing got to you. You were surrounded and protected by men.
Grace SlickThe only way out of the Scientology church is rip the Band-Aid off and know that your eternity is not at stake and know that you're doing the right thing and know that you're involved in a damaging, hurtful cult. Just look outside, don't listen to Scientology. They are not saving the world. Don't give up your lives, don't give up your families, don't give up your friends for something that turns its back on you and is ultimately a lie. What's Scientology's selling is a lie.
Leah ReminiNone of us has a girlfriend. But being in a band, you meet people everywhere you go. I know mine will turn up one day.
Isaac HansonEven though there's reasons to try things that may or may not work, it's still a real intimate way to finish the song with everybody right there in the band just locked in.
Stevie Ray VaughanHe had found the band of jackals he needed. But as Jack McCall rode through the center of town, he experienced the terrifying certainty that a man faces when he's about to make his own name famous. He lacked both a hero's calm and a coward's resolve to survive at any price.
Walter HillThere are a lot of disadvantages with the YouTube stigma, because no one wants to be known as just a cover band. It's all about the original music.
Alex GootEmma hears me come up the stairs and asks me to watch a movie with her. I stick Band-Aids on my weeping cuts, put on pink pajamas so we match, and snuggle with her under her rainbow comforter. She arranges all of her stuffed animals around us in a circle, everyone facing the TV, then presses play...Ghosts dare not enter here.
Laurie Halse AndersonWhen everything is together - the band, me, the audience, it's boss! It's just like magic.
Janis Joplin