Popular quotes about Band! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 20
When I'm representing my music live I think of it very much in a rock band sense. When I first started doing festivals in the 90s there really weren't other DJs playing the stages I was playing. So I felt I was being afforded an opportunity to kind of make a statement about what DJ music can be live. In the 90s, if you were a DJ you were in the dance tent, and you were playing house music and techno music. There was no such thing as a DJ - a solo DJ - on a stage, after a rock band and before another rock band: that just didn't happen.
DJ ShadowI 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.
Jack AntonoffMy world was a community ballet school, a marching band, my two sisters and my girlfriends. I played saxophone in the band and was a bit nerdy.
Jennifer GarnerMysticism is concerned primarily with moving our awareness field from the beginning of the band of perception, the human band, up to the enlightened bands of perception.
Frederick LenzThis is going to sound really corny, but it's the way I feel: Musicians have been around for a really long time. It's a really, really old job. When you look at the way that a small band toured back in the '50s, it's similar to the way that a small band tours now. It's been this long tradition, and when you meet somebody who has been doing this for a really long time, you have to have tremendous respect for them.
Will SheffI spent most of my 20s playing music. I was in a band and we worked really hard and did not get very far. I was really close to being this guy who used to be in this band who is still playing and trying to get some recordings together, but I got really lucky. That's never lost in me, that I went through Saturday Night Live.
Fred ArmisenThe main reason we didn't break up is because we weren't really a college band. We were just, two dudes who were messing around with music. We never played off-campus except for once or twice. We never had any ambitions to make it as a band after college, or anything like that. So that probably worked in our favor. We never took anything seriously, we still don't!
Andrew VanWyngardenWhen 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 VedderThe thing about Matt Cameron is he has made us 1000 times a better band than we've ever been. He's such a freight train on drums and such a cool individual as a man that it makes us better as a band, and we are now complete with him.
Mike McCreadyIf you are a pop band, don't say you're a metal band. Poison and Warrant were about as metal as the Backstreet Boys.
Geezer ButlerI have some idea that if I pick on [boy band] One Direction, I'll get a ton of hate mail, because I know that when you're 15, you love a band like you will kill people. But I don't quite realize that that's true about people - adults - who read The Hunger Games.
Joel SteinA learning experience for sure. You're always learning in this business. How to work with people and how to handle your band on a professional level. How to stick up for your band and do what you think is the right thing and to know when to let things happen against what you think is best. It's challenging but it's been a good thing for us, no doubt.
Sherri DuPreeI grew up not really listening to guitar players. Especially when I was studying music, I was just interested in piano players and arrangers and composers; I came to playing in a band from the perspective of someone who never expected to play guitar in a band.
Daniel RossenA band isn't a band unless they're playing together. Otherwise it's just five guys that are living off their royalty checks.
Joe PerryIn 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 Tragically Hip, more so than any other band I've worked with, approach their work like a team. This might sound way too pat, but they're like a great hockey team: all five of them have their roles. They go at their shows like an athletic event; they're in it to win it, and they'll lay it out there on the proverbial ice in order to win and get the crowd on their side. You can't do that when you just throw a band together. There's a sixth sense there that makes it easy.
Steve BerlinWhen I auditioned for my high school band the band director was excited because my father was known to be a great musician. When he heard me, he said 'Are you sure you're Ellis's son?'
Wynton MarsalisAs a result, I had to get my own playground which was my band Colours. This band lasted for about eight years and then the air was out of it and it was time to finish.
Eberhard WeberWhen I see four young kids in a band, I think, That looks really fun, no matter how shitty they are. You develop your own thing, and get excited about your band name. It's all so harmless.
Stephen MalkmusWe'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 weren't like mates who decided to form a band. The other three met me because they were interested in being in the band that I was starting.
Billy CorganI wanted to be in a band that gave bang for the buck. I wanted to be in the band who didn't look like a bunch of guys who, you know, should be in a library studying for their finals.
Gene SimmonsMy brother was always in bands and on the road when I was a kid and he was my inspiration. He never made it with a big band, in fact he never made a record. Here he is fifty-something years old.
Jimmy ChamberlinI've never had a band with more than 3 people (meaning only two string players), so I love having the ability for 3-part polyphony.
Colin MarstonThe biggest secret weapon we had in regards to really being true to this part of the world, and making sure this part of the world could see themselves in this film [Moana] in a way that felt positive and accurate, was Opetaia, my co-writer, Opetaia Foa'i, who has a great band called Te Vaka and is an amazing musical and cultural ambassador.
Lin-Manuel MirandaI've got quite a big gay following. I played a lesbian prostitute in the TV series 'Band Of Gold' but I think my following really grew when I played one in the film 'Imagine Me & You,' with Piper Perabo.
Lena HeadeyNew Kids on the Block are on season two [Full House ], so that was just a huge lifelong dream come true. Joey McIntyre is great. He is a real actor too; he is just not a famous boy-band musician.
Andrea BarberI do a lot of curiosity buying; I buy it if I like the album cover, I buy it if I like the name of the band, anything that sparks my imagination. I still like to go to record stores, I like to just wander around and I'll buy whatever catches my attention.
Bruce SpringsteenEmma 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 AndersonI'm ashamed that we've progressed as little as we have sometimes. I think the template that every band looks at is The Beatles and how much they progressed in six or seven years. But if you're seeing it, good. Hopefully we're evolving. It's hard to tell from here.
Alan SparhawkThere was a time in our very recent history when it was โinterestingโ to be a Star Wars fan. It was sort of like admitting you masturbate twice a day or that your favorite band was They Might Be Giants. Star Wars was something everyone of a certain age secretly loved but never openly recognized
Chuck KlostermanThere was one point in high school actually when I was on the chess team, marching band, model United Nations and debate club all at the same time. And I would spend time with the computer club after school. And I had just quit pottery club, which I was in junior high, but I let that go.
Rainn WilsonI went to Morocco, joined a band called Pegasus, ran out of money, went to Gibraltar and worked on the docks, writing songs about the sun and the morning and the birds.
Graham ParkerIโm in a band. I donโt go to church every Sunday. I love punk rock music. Sometimes I use swear words a lot. I respect and admire gay men and women. Iโm obsessed with horror films. I know what shame feels like. And guess what old man? Jesus is still my Savior.
Hayley WilliamsI'm quite good at water skiing. Dave Clark, from the 1960s band Dave Clark Five, taught me how to water ski in Spain one year. I can do jumps too. I used to go to a club in Heathrow, but I don't do it any more, as it's given me a bad back. I was brought up in Poole, Dorset, so I've always loved watersports.
Tony BlackburnOur country, the United States of America, may be the worlds largest economy and the worlds only superpower, but we stretch ourselves dangerously thin by taking on commitments like Iraq with only a motley band of allies to share the burden.
John SprattMy daughter Meredith Moon from my second wife has a band that does Appalachian music, with five-strong banjo, clawhammer style. I may have to direct her somewhere. Meredith was my middle name. I would have to direct her because I am always directing something. She's in the musician's union and she is only 21. Your kids surprise you.
Gordon LightfootThen, you know, the other more-traditional role of the producer in, like, the kind of Quincy Jones sense is kind of part arranger. So you're coming up with, like, these - you hear these songs that are quite bare-bones, and you dream up what's the band doing? What's the rhythm section doing? What's the guitars, strings, pianos - that sort of thing. It's almost like a little toolbox.
Mark RonsonThe band's never taken a year off. Last August we decided to take one, and three months in I was bored to tears.
Steven TylerI started playing guitar at the age of 8 or 9 years. Very early, and I was like already into pop music and was just trying to copy what I heard on the radio. And at a very early age I started experimenting with old tape recorders from my parents. I was 11 or 12 at that time and then when I was like 14 or 15 I had a punk band. I made all the classic rock musician's evolutions and then in the early nineties I bought my first sampler and that is how I got into electronic music, because I was able to produce it on my own. That was quite a relief.
Christian FenneszPerforming alone - it's a very solitary experience. When you're in a band, when something amazing happens on stage you can look at each other, "Yeah! we're so locked in." Or if something goes wrong, you can look at each other and shrug and say, "Oops." If you're doing it by yourself, you reflect on it in a completely different way.
Aoife O'Donovan