Popular quotes about Band! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 15
I was in every band class I could get in, like after school jazz band and marching band, and that's where I really learned to read music from elementary all the way through junior high and high school.
Chad SmithThere's a lot of discussion about whether you should be a good live band or a good studio band. I think you can use the studio to make a great "studio record" and not necessarily have to reproduce exactly that on stage, but still be a great "live band." Having said that, if what you're going for is just the raw capture of your live sound, then that's cool, too - go for it! I enjoy working in the studio, though, and while I try to get near to an approximation of what's going on onstage, it's not my first priority usually.
Ted LeoWhen I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily I should have been in that band - or at least in a Pixies cover band.
Kurt CobainMy first job was in a Bohemian polka band, the Rejcek family polka band in Abbott. The old man in the band had another blacksmith shop in Abbott, but he liked me. All he had was horns and drums, and I was set up over there with my little guitar with no amps or nothing. I would play as loud as I wanted to, and nobody could hear me.
Willie NelsonWe went from being a band that was recording songs in my bandmate's bedroom to a band that's doing extensive touring and had a record on the Billboard charts and everything happened insanely fast, but it's not something that I sought out. It just happened.
Bethany CosentinoCornelius Cardew very famous in Britain, because he was the darling of the avant-garde, and he played in a band called AMM, which was an improvising band in the '60s. Paul McCartney used to come watch them. Later on in life, he became disenchanted with avant-garde music, because he felt it couldn't reach the public. It didn't have a wide enough appeal. So he'd take these tunes of old English folk songs and write Stalinist lyrics over the top of them. I do think that when he changed to folk songs, he actually lost the tiny audience he already had, which is quite interesting.
Alasdair MacLeanI'm happy doing different things. Being in a band is great, but being in a band can be difficult sometimes.
James IhaMy older brother was the guitar player in the neighborhood band. My parents were the cool ones that had the basement for rehearsal. Rather than hang with my peers after school, I wanted to just listen to the band. More than that, I wanted to play.
Jill SobuleWe 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 FreyIt's better to be the largest independent band from Brazil instead of be the smallest mainstream band.
Fernanda TakaiComposing is just another exciting thing. It's as exciting as being in a band. It's kind of like joining a new band for three months.
James IhaWhen my band MU landed on Maui in 1973 we were greeted by a wonderful group of peace loving brothers & sisters who we immediately formed a bond with. We had two instant roadies, Spider & Richard, who helped with every move of our musical equipment. We settled into our house on the edge of the rainforest that eventually became a portable studio. We started rehearsing and booked the Lahaina Civic Auditorium for a full moon concert starring MU and a local band The Space Patrol.
Merrell FankhauserMy 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 BellsonWhen I was growing up, until I was 18 or 19, I was totally invested in the classical music world. I had no concept of anything else. The closest thing to a cool band I listened to was Radiohead. Radiohead were the only band I liked in high school. I was just obsessed with classical music, opera, Claude Debussy, and that kind of stuff.
Katie StelmanisI've always seen My Chemical Romance as the band that would have represented who me and my friends were in high school, and the band that we didn't have to represent us - the kids that wore black - back then.
Gerard WayAverage band with a great drummer sounds great, great band with an average drummer sounds average.
Buddy RichI don't want to hear from a band that pretty much sounds like another band. Oh I've heared this riff before, or I've heared these words that everyone is saying. I want to hear new poetry, new guitar riffs, new drum-beats, new sounds. Then I'm really interested.
Gordon RaphaelA band is a great way to destroy a friendship, and a tour's a great way to destroy a band.
Julian CasablancasWhen it comes to grunge or even just Seattle, I think there was one band that made the definitive music of the time. It wasn't us or Nirvana, but Mudhoney. Nirvana delivered it to the world, but Mudhoney were the band of that time and sound.
Eddie VedderWe'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 StradlinWhen I showed โBlack and the Red IIIโ in Malmรถ, Sweden, it was a continuum - a band - all around the galleryseeing this huge space in the gallery in Malmรถ, I just took a deep breath and I put the paper around in a single band. Then I continued along, printing on the wall like a trompe lโoeil to reiterate the images in the work printed on paper that I had push-pinned to the wall. I literally took the rhythm and the images from โBlack and the Red IIIโ and continued that on the wall.
Nancy SperoA lot of things just got distorted, like stories about each other. After the tour we never talked. I believe a band should be a band.
Tommy BolinI was really running a music school back then, because my band wasn't making any money. I keep talking about money, because most people don't understand the part of money in running a band.
Artie ShawI saw an article where the manager of the Pussycat Dolls, which is kind of this like striptease band, girl band, said, oh well, the girls are totally third-wave feminist. This is what third-wave feminism is about. Like you don't get to use that word. You don't get to say that something is feminist as a way to sell back sexism to women, as a way to further consumerist ideas.
Jessica ValentiThe shows are so different from each other, depending on whether I play with my band, Nine Stories, other musicians, an orchestra, only one or two members of my band.
Lisa LoebThe day Metallica's over, i'm not going to put an ad looking for another band. I'll put my drumsticks on the shelf and there's 14 other things I wanna try. Metallica's the only band I've ever been and it's the only I ever wanna be in.
Lars UlrichI did exactly what I wanted to do. It was always my intention to put a band together and be a band and not be about the solo pop guy. That was never me. All of the musicians that made me do what I wanted to do were bands. I didn't see it any other way.
Chris DaughtryI was 21, and I was like, "Man, am I really gonna start over and try this whole thing over again? Do I want to start over and be in a rock band again and try to act like a 17-year-old for as long as I can?" Because that was what I was doing with Simon Dawes band. I decided that if I was going to go on playing music, I was going to try and work on it. So I got into Leonard Cohen and Will Oldham, guys that really inspired me not only as songwriters but also through their music as people, and that's kind of what the shift was for me.
Taylor GoldsmithIt kills me when I see some metal band trying to pass themselves off as an 'alternative band.
Dimebag DarrellI knew I wanted to be an actor for a long time, but I was based out of Chicago and then I went to New York and I did 'The Upright Citizens Brigade' out there. I had a two-man show with a guy named Oliver Ralli who's now in the band Pass Kontrol, which is a big band out of New York.
Jake M. JohnsonMy idea for our band is to be influenced by something different for every album. So it's almost like making a new band with every record we make I think. That's kind of the path we're headed down now anyway.
Dylan BaldiWe'd rather be a band that some people are going to passionately hate than be a ringtone band.
Sam EndicottKiss is the number-one American band in gold-record sales. In the world, only the Beatles and the Stones are ahead of us. Every other band should be wiping my ass. The line forms over there to the left.
Gene SimmonsWe're not a band because we're trying to be the Mother Teresas of the music industry, out to serve everybody. We're a band first and foremost because we love playing pop music.
Alice NutterWe, Autolux band, write in very different ways; sometimes we play with the band and write music first and then form vocal parts and lyrics. Or I'll find some music, or a guitar part or something, and I'll just write an entire sketch of an idea from that. So I think things have always been that way, it's just that this time around we had some more obstacles off and on all the time.
Carla AzarPeople say, 'Why don't you do interviews? What do you think about this? What do you think about that?' My job in the band is to play drums, to get up on stage and hold the band together. That's what I do. At the end of the day that's all that's important. Everything else is irrelevant.
Larry Mullen, Jr.I 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 SchmidtA lot of people change their band names because they're looking for a change of atmosphere.
Justin VernonOne day I would love to do rock a gig on the moon - how rad would that be? Isn't Richard Branson flying planes to outer space? Mรถtley Crรผe could be the first band to play on the moon.
Tommy LeeBeing in Nirvana was amazing an experience that will never happen again for me. And I look on them as some of the best and worst times of my life. But we're in this band, the Foo Fighters, making music for the love of music. We all came from bands that had disbanded, and we were drawn to each other because we missed playing - we missed getting in the van, loading our equipment, and watching it break down in the middle of a show. And that feeling hasn't gone away. There's nothing I'd rather do than make music. It's the love of my life.
Dave GrohlThe Republican Party had a big day in yesterday's midterm elections and now controls the House and Senate. And don't ask me how this happened, but the Republican Party also gained control of three seats in our show's band.
Conan O'BrienOnce I had the band, Jason [Moran] and John [Patitucci] and Eric [Harland] - it's very exciting to have that trio of just world-class guys - I already knew it was going to be fantastic. I didn't really tell them anything about it. They didn't know what they were going to play beforehand.
Jose JamesIn the long-run I think we lost some of our audience because of noise. I don't think people were ready for it, OK? And after we did it nothing really happened, but then 4-5 years later when there was a rap-rock emergence, we were already over it. We could have made Bring the Noise part 2, Bring the Noise part 3 - but like I said we're a METAL band, we didn't want to do that.
Charlie BenanteI tried to play bass in a punk band once, and it was an absolute disaster. I canโt play anything. I donโt know what it is.
Nate RuessYes, I always say that were a National League band. What I mean is, if you play an instrument, you have to sing. So I always call our drummer up. Even the drummer has to take a turn on the microphone.
Emmylou Harris