Popular quotes about Band! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 16
The band? No way! There ain't no band. The band is not 'the band' right now. It's just three guys.
James HetfieldA lot of the music is the kind of thing I grew up with, listening to it with my parents. So there was a band in London called the BBC Big Band, and I sang with them. And I had never done a big band before, and it was just so fantastic and I had such a good time...so that's how it all came about
Frances RuffelleAll those experiences were a chance to learn more about music. Playing with the Valley band is like such a "live" band. I mean, really, in many ways Bright Eyes is really a studio project. We form bands to tour, but it really is - you know, we take the songs and we figure out how to decorate them and it's all in the studio, we build the songs that way. Whereas Mystic Valley Band was the exact opposite, where everybody knows what they are gonna be playing on the song and there's sort of a general stylistic approach, and then it's just plug in and play.
Conor OberstKurt Cobain was Nirvana. He named the band, hired its members, played guitar, wrote the songs, fronted the band onstage and in interviews, and took responsibility for the band's business decisions.
Courtney LoveThe 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 KinsellaI think that was going on with bands like The Strokes was that the idea of the band, a real band, was making a comeback. My brother in law is an example- before he was listening to some country music, even some of that awful nu-metal stuff , but there weren't many options really.
James MercerI was raised in bars. My grandmother had one, and when I was 12 years old I'd go stay with her and that's where I got to watch her band play -- she had a seven or eight-piece band, and I would sit in the kitchen and peek through the door. I was kind of a 12-year-old bottle washer.
Toby KeithI would rather write songs and then practice with the band. Just the band camaraderie is awesome and then writing music and then just listening to it and saying 'Dude, we made that music!' That's really fun.
Sam McCandlessMy 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 SobuleI mean I like pop music, and I like heavy music and, stuff that I like... the band I've signed on to our label right now; they're called The Sounds. They're kind of like a new-wave pop band.
James IhaThe whole punk scene is, of course, responsible for the Go-Go's ever getting created. Because before punk rock happened, you couldn't start a band if you didn't know how to play an instrument. But when punk happened it was like, 'Oh, it doesn't matter if you can play or not. Go ahead, make a band.' And that's exactly what the Go-Go's did.
Jane WiedlinI was a huge fan of this band called Sparks. It was a pretty good inauguration to music since their music is quite complex. They were a little glammy, and me - being a kid and not really understanding the complexity of grown-up lyrics - I took the best out of it. But at the same time, it was mysterious enough and too far away from me for me to really be able to reach it. But they were my first love affair in the world of music. I loved that band.
Johan RenckI don't know if it was related to the type of music that we were doing at that time or what, but Todd Cook actually just turned to me and was like, "You know what would be a great name for a metal band? Dead Child." We talked half-jokingly that we were going to do a band. I guess as time went on, I started writing songs that were more metal sounding, and it just evolved from there. It actually started with the name first, and then the songs came second.
David PajoIt happened to be, from '73 to '78, the five years that, our most glorious years for bass players. We had Larry Graham, with his own band, Stanley Clarke with his own band. We have Bootsy doing his thing. We had Jaco Pastorius. They were all leading their own bands.
Marcus MillerFor me personally, and as a band, there are a lot of challenges. Being in a band is like war, it's a battle - to focus, to really put together something that's formidable and then keeping everything together.
Erik RutanA guitar for me is pretty much strictly in the context of writing songs for my band, coming up with ideas with my band, and then being able to perform those songs as best as I can on stage - that's what the guitar for me has always been.
Scott IanYou 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 WebbNone of us went to university, none of us went to college, none of us played in a different band before, none of us done anything. We were the last great band to come out of nowhere, on an indie label. We've sold 50 million records. That's still the benchmark. Until someone does what we've done, I'll always consider myself the last big songwriter
Noel GallagherWell, Peter Rowan and I had plans to form a band when he left Bill Monroe. I always thought it was going to be a bluegrass band, but I guess when Peter left Bill Monroe he had had enough of bluegrass. He had written some songs and of course the Beatles were a big influence back then. So, we decided to something different and it ended up being that.
David GrismanA 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 BolinIn college, unable to be "special" - or in demand - as a girl, I made myself useful, even essential, in my microcosm - as a writer and photographer for the band, particularly for the band director. My "specialness" was to produce something of value, not to look like something (with that different kind of "value"), so I was still fundamentally invisible, but had a significant purpose.
Cris MazzaThe reason I don't play any of the old songs is because I really honor my old band, and I think that those songs are best served within the context of that band.
Billy CorganThe 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 UlrichYouths write me and tell me that their band will go nowhere because of all the bad bands in the world. I tell them there has always been awful music and that no great band ever wasted any time complaining, they just got it done. Their ropey ranting is just a way to get out of the hard work of making music that will do some lasting damage.
Henry RollinsA song is what you fall in love with first, but then I think a band's ideals and a band's sense of fashion and a sense of how they treat people is what you fall in love with afterwards.
James TaylorIt is really refreshing to hear a big band that has the ability to execute ensemble passages with swing and precision while retaining a "small group" feel during the solo sections. This kind of "tight, loose" approach is seldom heard in big bands, whether they are professional or not. Now, all the band needs is to hit the road and take the music around the world!
John PatitucciPeople 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.A lot of people change their band names because they're looking for a change of atmosphere.
Justin VernonI used to split my time between writing, music and painting. I would work on a book and then abandon it, start a band, do an album, quit music, then do a gallery show. Eventually I decided to give writing a serious shot.
Isaac MarionBeing 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 SlickEven 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 VaughanBlackheart Records being 25 years old represents staying power and the fact that we weren't able to get a record out through conventional means, so we had to create this record company to put out our records if we wanted to be a band that had records to give out to their fans.
Joan JettThe first time I ever went to Chicago was with Zappa and I had a fantastic experiences with him and every other band I've played with. It's a great music town.
Terry BozzioYes, 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 HarrisChina has to move to a more flexible foreign currency trading system, no question about that. You might see two or three moves to widen the band, say to 0.5 percent.
Arjuna MahendranIf I wasn't bound to Brooklyn, due to my own personal reasons like taking care of my mother and the fact that this is where the band is based, I would probably move to Iceland.
Peter SteeleI grew up in a Southern Baptist-style church with a choir, a band, and music, but I've been asking myself my whole life, "Why is my own church, my own community, rejecting me because of my sexuality?".
Roger Ross WilliamsI wish to be put away in a western dress I designed, with my daughter's little gold cross necklace and my son's small white testament in my hands, and my wedding band on.
Patsy ClineStanding on the bridge, looking across at that empty city, everything in the compass of my gaze had been set there by a human hand. Somehow those pylons had been strung with wire, and those towers raised, and roofs tiled. There had been food and drink for millions of mouths. I don't cry easy, but my vision blurred as I stared on the ruins of what we had been, and I watched the small band of men in rags move toward it to pick at it like birds on the carcass of some giant.
Marcel TherouxBecause we take these huge long breaks, and then I just kind go, "Okay, fine, this is the way that I've chosen to live my life, and if the band now fades into obscurity, so be it, that's my decision." But then we come back and it's still as big as ever, or bigger. It's always been a surprise to me, that it worked out that way.
Milo AukermanTraditionally speaking, the three biggest twats in any band are the singer, the keyboardist and the drummer. I don't need to say anything else.
Noel GallagherOne of the things I've always personally tried to stress with this band was to have some kind of visual aspect and to be consistent with it - like, not to change.
Peter Steele