Quotes About Band

We are a band that stylistically crosses a lot of barriers and generational gaps. The heavier portion of the band, the modern music elements, the visual part of the band appeal to a younger audience. For an older audience, we have chops and great songs that are reminiscent of the things that were great about rock and roll when they enjoyed it. We're the kind of band that can cross those lines.

Every good band in the world was a cover band first. The Beatles were and the Stones were. Everybody was a cover band.

There'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.

For starters, I should just tell you that The Band was always my favorite band from the first moment that I heard the first note of "The Weight" on WNEW radio. It was when I was eight years old and Music From Big Pink came out. They were my favorite band always. They had a profound influence on me and on my becoming a musician.

My 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.

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 didn't decide to start to playing piano until I was almost 13 years old when my friends and I thought it would be fun to start a band. None of us actually played any instruments so the band never quite got off the ground, BUT it made me go home and ask my parents for piano lessons. That was really the beginning for me. Once I started, it was all I wanted to do.

I 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.

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

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.

Michael Sunday and I are the original members of the band. We first did it just for charities and benefit concerts. It was very ad-hoc, and before we knew it, we were really a band. We went through several drummers and guitarists before we were happy with the line up.

I'm not going to say I'll never rock with a band, because I'm too much of a fan of the aesthetic of a great band. But a girl group? Not again.

I just want a band and keep them working, people that I like and who I think a lot of. Once my band is happy, then I am happy.

Due to people's health, and certain things that have happened to people's physicality because of their healthy, that would probably keep us from touring per se. It doesn't mean that the original band wouldn't someday do a song. But our focus is on the current band, and moving into the future, as far as touring is concerned.

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.

My all time favorite band is Paramore and she's basically one of the reasons I was inspired... umm, well Hayley Williams from Paramore was one of the basic reasons I wanted to go rock. I saw the band live and they're great together and they write incredible music and also I like a lot of older bands. I like Motley Crue a lot and who else, I've got a lot of favorite bands but those are pretty much the main ones.

Duane Allman was bursting with energy ... he was a force to be reckoned with. His drive and focus, as well as his intense belief in himself and our band, was incredible. He knew we were going to make it. We all knew we were a good band, but no one had that supreme confidence like he did, and it was a great thing, because his confidence and enthusiam were infectious... it says a lot that his hero was Muhammad Ali. That kind of supreme confidence that Ali had - that's where Duane was coming from

When 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.

Average band with a great drummer sounds great, great band with an average drummer sounds average.

To me, the producer is there to make sure the album gets done and gets done as good as possible. So if that means that you have to help write a bridge or help write a part, that's what you do. If that means you help tune the guitars, then that's what you do. If that means all you do is tell the band their takes are good and they should stop f——— with things, then that's what you do. If it means you don't do anything except make sure the band doesn't fight, then that's what you do. Sometimes it's a little more stressful than others, but for the most part, you just don't complain about it and you just get it done.

Band members have a special bond. A great band is more than just some people working together. It's like a highly specialized army unit, or a winning sports team. A unique combination of elements that becomes stronger together than apart.

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.

What we've noticed is that people latch onto our music, and are very, very supportive of it, even almost defensive about it. Quite fanatical, some fans, aren't they? Just like they are in England, once they get a hold of "their" band, they don't want their band to get too big anyways.

Trying to make it and get people to respect your band, being a cool band-all of that stuff-I think we've arrived at a place where we have kids and everything is in perspective and it doesn't matter.

A lot of bands don't really like each other. I read an Interpol interview the other day, it was a really good interview because it was showing a different aspect of a band. They don't really like each other - they work together and they kinda exist together and that's how they like it. They're like, "we didn't get into this band looking for friends."

My musical background in Tyler, Texas was quite outstanding. Uh, I grew up with, uh, with high school teachers who were in bands, they could play music. And we had a nine piece band there in Tyler, and I joined them when I was about, oh, 15 years old and traveled all over Texas in that band, playing for the elite oil people. Hah. And um, I was making about 50 bucks a night, and uh, it taught me, they taught me how to find my timing and to learn the songs that I wanted.

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

Imagine someone so infatuated by a band that they have every different pressing of every album the band made. Most of the time, the only difference in the album is the matrix number or a different 'made in' notation on the back cover or label. This is enough to make some people extremely excited. Actually, much more than excited.

The 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.

When 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?'

In high school no guys wanted to be in a band with me unless I was going to play bass or play grindcore or be in a scream-o band, so it was fun to finally have that experience of having my songs backed by a drummer and a bassist who were just as excited about it as I was.

Everybody now who's playing in Unicorn band is deeply schooled in music. I'm the only one who's self-taught, which I think is a bit hilarious because I'm leading the band and writing the songs, but I'm surrounded by such overwhelmingly competent musicians.

Youths 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.

We'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.

When you're in a band that's so big when you're young, you kind of lose your identity a little bit. You just become part of the band. I just needed to get away from it.

I moved to Manchester to join a band and ended up getting into acting, and I moved back to London to become an actor and ended up joining a band.

Luckily for me, when I was growing up in high school, I had a band, and I was a singer in the band. I'm less of a legit Broadway singer than I am a pop-rock singer.

My 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.

Another factor is that in terms of the original compositions, this is our strongest year yet. Everyone wrote a fantastic piece and everyone really had a greater sense of how to write for this band -- not only for this particular instrumentation, but for these particular players. Each year, the reality is getting closer to the ideal of a collective.

I tend to write pretty much by myself. I always did that anyway. I used to write with Ron Strykert 'cause he was the only guitarist and we played well together. We lived in the same place. I would play a certain style and he would kind of dance around what I did, in a sense. I learned from him and also vice-versa. With this band, I think I bounce ideas off everybody. Perhaps on the next album they'll be more collaborative stuff, but for the last 2-3 years, I've been pretty well writing by myself.

If you are any competent musician, if you have creative ideas, ideas of songs, of arrangements, in a band like the Stones, where these 2 people do all the things, there is no freedom.

By 17, I had a whole band that would go in and play. It was called Spontaneous Inventions, after a Bobby McFerrin album.

Some people even went off to form another band, Power Station.

There's nothing that compares to being in a band with your best friends. We're so comfortable together, we understand each other. It feels, like, normal. Whereas solo period felt like I was trying to be something, and play a role, and pretend.

There is no way I would play guitar like a tour de force like I did in Led Zeppelin. John Bonham, phenomenal drummer, young man with his technique, but do you think he would ever have the opportunity to play like that in another band? Of course he hadn't.

We've gotten better at shooting down routine material or stuff we feel like we've done better in the past. Getting different people in the band for periods also keeps it from going stale.

In 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.

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.