Quotes About Band

If you have a great band with a mediocre drummer, you have a mediocre band. If you have a mediocre band with a great drummer, you have a great band!

I actually knew Sully's sister, and I was in a band called Stripmind, and then I became roommates with Sully and being out of a band, he asked if I wanted to join in his. Tony was originally the second guitarist in the band; a guy by the name of Lee Richards was the first. The rest is pretty much history.

I 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.

I was in bands as a singer-guitarist-songwriter until 1980-81. So, there's a bunch of stuff. A lot of the stuff is hard to come by-stuff by the Special Interest Group and the Zobo Funn Band. The Zobo Funn Band was a big Northeast cult band. We had about a billion skirmishes with the big rock industry.

I'm seeing myself as an outsider a little bit - definitely when I started the band. I knew what band's name meant and nobody else really did, so I'd be on stage every night and say, "Hello, we're Art Brut" - basically saying that we were rejects. But I mean, I didn't really sing, it did feel a bit like we were outsiders. It was a bit tongue-in-cheek when I first named the band that, but then we slowly turned into that - like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I know what it takes to make a band, how they should interact, what makes a record sound like it's a band - everything having to do with a band, I happen to be into.

I saw the Ramones, early on at a country-rock palace in Denver. They were opening for some record-company band, so the local music establishment, and I emphasize the word "establishment," was there in force, and the handful of us who knew the Ramones were up in front. And half the fun was, you know, not only were the Ramones the most powerful band I had ever seen at that point, but they made it look so simple - that anyone could do it, hell, even I could do it. This is what I should be doing.

Phish is such a good band; they just make stuff up as a jam band.

The thing about this band is that every member of the band is a song-writer so that takes some of the pressure off.

You 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 naïve and teenage way, said, "That's it. I'm going to be in a band."

I play Rock Band, which is Guitar Hero times ten. You can play with four people, so when you have parties, you have a real band. Nobody ever wants to sing, so I'm always the one throwing down on the mic.

I've liked music since I can remember and the guitar was always the most attractive thing about music to me at that time. I played guitar in a high school band. I played guitar in various other bands up until I was 20, but nothing too serious. From time to time someone would ask me to play with a group, but I stopped playing with band-oriented projects as a whole soon after.

We 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.

I was inspired by a lot of people when I was young, every band that came through town, to the theater, or the dance hall. I was at every dance, every night club, listened to every band that came through, because in those days we didn't have MTV, we didn't have television.

The Big Band Era is my era. People say, 'Where did you get your style from?' I did the Big Band Era on guitar. That's the best way I could explain it.

When 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.

If you're a good band then the filter of the band is pretty strong.

I 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.

Mysticism 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.

I'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.

It 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.

You 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.

There was a band very early on in our class, and I played in that band and as a teenager, I continued. It was more from my own relationship with the instruments at this time, figuring out the instrument and then having to learn different pieces that I really got into music. I really discovered the almost transcending power of music. And I think that is why I am so into it.

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.

A 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.

None 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

Well, 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.

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.

Metallica's the only band I've ever been in and it's the only band I ever wanna be in.

It was by listening to Goodman's band, that I began to notice the guitarist Charlie Christian, who was one of the first musicians to play solos in a big band set-up.

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

We still talk about [school band]. Almost 40 years later. It's like people are talking about, "Man we need to have a morning band reunion".

I think we're a little bit protective in that way. You're always trying to balance between what's spreading the word about the band and what's good money and what's a shitty look. Is this good for the longevity of the band? Do people even care these days? We care, but do we care more about the money? We've had a lot of discussions about things. It gets us into a lot of fights, but it also makes you question your own morals in a really good way.

You can kiss my Kiss-loving ass because Kiss was never a critic's band. It was a people's band.

I was trying to take the band in a direction that I thought was appropriate, and Roth was trying to take the band in more of a Las Vegas direction. And there he is.

I 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.

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.

It always offended me when I was in the studio and the engineer or the assumed producer for the session would start bossing the band around. That always seemed like a horrible insult to me.

One 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? Mötley Crüe could be the first band to play on the moon.

The 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.

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.

Rock n' roll is over, don't you get it? It lasted 25 years and now gets wiped out. The Sex Pistols were the bullet in the brain. They were the last rock and roll band.

There will be a Led Zeppelin as long as there's a Jimmy Page, John Bonham, John Paul Jones and Robert Plant. This isn't a nostalgia band playing the hits forever. If anything ever happened and somebody left - which I really can't see happening - I don't think we'd bother to carry on. The magic for me is as it is now.

There are kids out there that are into Iron Maiden and others who are strictly into industrial music, but they come for the same reason; they all like us and they different things out of the band's music.

Mexicans are a band of illiterate Indians.

A lot of times, when a band finds success with a certain style or sound, they have a really hard time breaking away from that to grow as artists.

I've learned a lot about how to be in a band. It's like being in a marriage to these people. Because there's so many of us, there's a polygamous quality to it, which I've heard is really enjoyable.

There was a time in our very recent history when it was “interesting” 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