Quotes About Band

The most significant bands I played in when I first got to New York were Bobby Watson's band, Roy Hargrove's first band, Benny Golson's band, Benny Green's trio, and probably the most significant out of all of those, for me personally, was playing in Freddie Hubbard's band.

My favorite band was The Band, and nobody compares in my mind with The Band.

The only problem with Shearwater as a name for a band is that people sort of think that it's this amalgamated word like Pushmonkey or something. Doesn't have an actual...you know, like Clearwater or Stillwater, they don't realize that it actually is a thing. It seemed like such a beautiful word, I was so suprised that no body had named their band that.

I was in a band when I was 15. We were a glam band. Then I couldn't afford to buy makeup. At the time that was the thing.

Even when I'm touring, I feel like a sideman ... everybody's working together. We get to play longer solos; it's not just "Here's the record! Thank you for coming Goodnight" ... it has always had a "band" feel instead of being a singer and his backup band.

With the exception of Megadeth, I can't imagine any band we were hesitant about touring with. I mean we liked the original Megadeth, but I can't think of any band we toured with we weren't psyched about.

I think what's cool about about going on a co-headline tour is everyone's bringing a huge show, so it's not like opening band, opening band, then here's the big show. It's like two big shows.

I 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.

My 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.

In my last band, Soundgarden, I had a couple of different drummers sit in on some stuff and it was fun for me to kind of take a break and watch the band.

A 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.

I think a band - even a band that's been around as long as the Rolling Stones - I think that's still the formula. You know you're gonna get those songs, and you don't mind sitting through the ones that you maybe don't know very well because you know they're not gonna let you down - they're not gonna mess with you. And I kind of feel the same way about the way I structure my shows.

You 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.

Gym Class is a band I am more directly involved with than any other band except for Fall Out Boy.

They [The Beatles] were the first band to not have a lead singer in the band.

With my little band, I did everything they did with a big band. I made the blues jump.

It's true I've always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way.

The Replacements definitely changed my life, I think they're just amazing. The thing that blew me away [a band like that] is that you'll get into a band from hearing one interesting song and then you'll realise that you've got seven or eight albums to listen to afterwards and every single one of them is a great record. The Replacements definitely changed my life.

Throughout my whole life, as a performer, I've never played with a band. I've always played alone, so I was never required to stay in rhythm or anything. So it was a real different experience for me to start playing with a band. There were so many basic things for me to learn.

Any time somebody is into your band that's a good thing. And if they're in a really cool, really popular band, that's a better thing.

It's terrifying to play your favorite band's song in front of your favorite band.

My 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.

There's people that say “It's not fair You have all that stuff.” I wasn't born with it. It was a horrible process to get to this. It took me my whole life. If you're new at this- and by “new at it.” I mean 15 years in, or even 20- you're just starting to grow traction. Young musicians believe they should be able to throw a band together and be famous, and anything that's in their way is unfair and evil. What are you, in your 20s, you picked up a guitar? Give it a minute.

The only good grades I ever got in school before I was kicked out were for creative writing. I thought that fiction might be in my future but then my career took a different path once the Beatles showed me what a blast being in a band could be. Writing my memoir Late, Late at Night reminded me how much I love the craft. So I decided to give fiction a shot again.Magnificent Vibration is the result. I’m still not quite sure where it came from, but once I got going, it practically wrote itself. I’ve heard writers I admire speak of that phenomenon, so maybe I’m on the right track.

I feel like if you let someone else create your vision, then it's not true to your band. No one can ever do as good as you want, or as good as you can yourself.

From my time in 'King Crimson,' I'd describe a Progressive band as one that keeps trying to break musical barriers, and keeps trying to do new music.

It's really easy, in a band, to overstate - you feel like everything you do is different than the past. I think this is just another Hold Steady record, but at the same time, there is some evolution. Like, "How can we make this chorus bigger?" "What do we want this to sound like?"

Alcohol whipped me. Alcohol and I had many, many marvelous times together. We laughed, we talked, we danced at the party together; then one day I woke up and the band had gone home and I was lying in the broken glass with a shirt full of puke and I said, 'Hey, man, the ball game's up'.

I love jazz. So to me, there are two main types of jazz. There's dancing jazz, and then there's listening jazz. Listening jazz is like Thelonius Monk or John Coltrane, where it's a listening experience. So that's what I like; I like to make stuff that you listen to. It's not really meant to get you up; it's meant to get your mind focused. That's why you sit and listen to jazz. You dance to big band or whatever, but for the most part, you sit and listen to jazz. I think it comes from that aesthetic, trying to take that jazz listening experience and put it on hip-hop.

I 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.

I didn't write any music at all, and then, I remember Jon Anderson being very insistent saying that there were two kinds of musicians: the ones who wrote music and the ones who didn't. And clearly the ones who wrote music were more superior human beings in his mind. So he kind of nudged me and sort of prodded me into it. I picked it up slowly. Then I learned more about chords and harmony and I just kept adding to that. One of the great things about having good players in your band is that you just ask them questions. You can pick up some good information that way.

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.

By the time The Band did The Last Waltz, the chemistry had changed, and it wasn't a thrill anymore to live that studio kind of life.

The great thing about rock-n-roll is you realize the top of the mountain is big enough for more than one band.

Hogslop is the real deal groovilicious honkin old-time string band. Guaranteed old-time awesomeness with these fellas around!

If you were to ask me, “What the hell does a musician have in common with a restaurant?” I would say a huge amount. It’s showtime every day, it’s a team of people, like, running a circus, which is running a rock-and-roll band.

You always come back to Duke Ellington - he's kind of like the thread that holds everything together from the big band descending to lots of jazz, actually.

In Europe they look upon jazz as art. In America it's a diversion. Somebody opens a restaurant and installs another band off to the side. People don't listen.

The Beatles had just come out, and everybody had a band. It was incredible competition out there.

'Sing It Again Rod' touches all the solo bases since Stewart's departure from the Jeff Beck Band, wherein he cut his teeth on American audiences for $75 a week plus expenses, and wisely ignores his generally inferior work with the Faces.

I haven't had that many people onstage for a while, and I'm looking forward to that. They're all such creative musicians in their own right. They're all complete individuals. They're not just a pick-up band. They all have their own thing going on.

I'd love to do my own music for sure. I'd love to have a band.

My dad was a singer in a band and neither of my parents went to college, and I ended up getting into Harvard and was the first person in my family that went to college and it happened to be Harvard.

All my band members were old enough to be my dad. It was like this family vibe.

The band's never taken a year off. Last August we decided to take one, and three months in I was bored to tears.

Sharper than a serpents tongue, tighter than a bongo drum, quicker than a one night stand, slicker than a mambo band.

I'd like to live off the band, but if not, I'll just retire to Mexico or Yugoslavia with a few hundred dollars, grow potatoes, and learn the history of rock through back issues of Creem magazine.

Playing in an independent rock band will eventually make you equal parts truck driver, gladiator and mule. Glamour is for those with trust funds.