Popular quotes about Band! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 23
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!
Duke EllingtonI enjoy playing with a big band occasionally, but it's too restricting; you really don't have a chance to stretch out and do what you want to do. Getting that thing of relating to a large band is great experience; I relate much better, though, if it's a small band.
Art PepperA good analogy is stretching a rubber band. You can stretch and stretch and even feel the tension increase in the muscles in your hands and arms as the gap from one end of the band to the other widens. But at some point you reach the limits of elasticity of the band and it snaps. The same thing happens with human systems.
John L. CastiFor me, a great show is when there's a great rapport with the band and the audience, and we're all really into it. The first trick is to bring the audience into the band, break the ice, have a life, and be one, so you can enjoy the next hour and a half together.
Andy SummersThe 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.
Jonathan MeiburgYou 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 naรฏve and teenage way, said, "That's it. I'm going to be in a band."
Michael StipeWhatever our personal differences are, there are no bigger fans of this band than the people who are in this band.
Alex Van HalenMichael 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.
Peter TorkToasted Heretic should have been cherished and helped, rather than ignored or sneered at, or put down as "quirky band with an arrogant singer". So I certainly didn't help the band, but the virtues I had meant that we recorded albums when everyone else just listened to them. But, yes, if you could suffer from high self-esteem, then I certainly suffered.
Julian GoughThe 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 WiedlinWhen I go on and listen to the stuff on the websites, I can't tell, it all sounds like the same band, like they should all be in one band together.
Marnie SternWe became friends as we became a band. Our friendship evolved as the band evolved. It had its ups and downs, but it was mostly ups for the four of us. We got along well almost all of the time. Hey! We liked each other and we still do.
Dave SchulthiseWhen 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.
Katie StelmanisAs rich as you think some of us are, for every $18.99 CD you buy, the artist usually sees a toonie or so. Pay your producer out of that. Then your manager. Then split it five ways among your band mates. Now don't act surprised when you see the drummer of a platinum-selling Canadian rock band behind the drive- thru window at Tim Hortons
Steven PageAverage band with a great drummer sounds great, great band with an average drummer sounds average.
Buddy RichI 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 ArmisenI think I would be much more enthusiastic about a band that covered more than just one particular album of mine. I don't ever really intend to record or to do shows with a live band. I don't really have a problem with it, but it doesn't really affect me either way.
DJ ShadowJay Z in many ways is a rock artist. In the sense that they've used hard rock, punk rock, psychedelic rock aesthetics and influences in their music. When you see Kanye West, he has a full band playing. Jay Z has a full band playing with Marshalls.
Ian AstburyWell, I was in a band. I was the singer with a band called the Soul Satisfiers. I sang then quite a bit of Jazz and some Top 40 stuff.
Gloria GaynorA 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 BolinSometimes the problem is not the people in the band, but the people around the band.
Roger Meddows TaylorWe 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".
Jon GordonI look upon The Animals, they were a great band initially, we left our mark, but thing was it was a band that couldn't live up to its name so I soldiered on. On one level, it was devastating for a while. On another level, maybe I should thank them for helping me make my own way in my own career.
Eric BurdonWhen I was a teenager in a band playing, everything was great. I still don't feel any different. I still wake up with the same love and passion as when I did this with the band. Because my life in music has let me live the kind of life that I've loved, and I've been able to share it with others and take care of the people I love.
Frank WildhornYou take all the time to write a song: you have to let it ooze on out by its natural self and that is pretty time consuming. Then you teach it to the band so everybody gets all the parts. Then you rehearse it and road test it, and all that. Then you get to the studio and there is a new guy in the band who calls himself the producer, right? Huh. He either makes it or breaks it usually before nightfall.
Gregg AllmanPeople don't seem to care about convictions any more. When I was a teenager, the deal was that, y'know, you had a band that you were really loyal towards, almost to a fault, and you stayed really loyal to that band. That was the whole thing, that was such a big deal.
Marnie SternThe rewriting is always crucial to what I do; whenever I do a scene, I always tell myself that this isn't final and that I can do it again, better. The pacing is probably from experience. I've always liked gradual disclosure. I keep thinking of my rubber-band theory. You have a rubber band that you keep pulling and pulling and pulling, and just at the moment of snapping you release it and start another chapter and start pulling again.
Robert CormierWhen I reissue these Minimal Wave Record songs, I also re-master them. With Oppenheimer Analysis, it turned out that the band still had the master tapes. So, Martin Lloyd from the band and I baked the tapes to restore the quality.
Veronica VasickaI 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.
Jim SturgessCommercial record has never interested me. It's amazing I was in a band like The Police that had such phenomenal commercial success. Part of what made The Police what it was was that we didn't all come in with obvious mainstream musical tastes. We were a rock band and somehow we had to make rock music, but it was informed by a lot of things outside of the mainstream for sure.
Andy SummersI'm sure that a lot of women and men feel differently about it, but for me this isn't about being the girl in the band... it's just about being IN the band, if that makes sense? We're trying to keep it in a pure and genuine place for us and not break it down to gender, because it's just a bit boring and obvious isn't it?
Lauren MayberryWe 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 CorganIt ["Begin the Beguine"] became such a hit that it superseded anything that any band had ever had. It was the first time that a so-called swing band played something melodic and still gave it a beat.
Artie ShawAt least here in Stockholm if you go out to any of our 4 metal clubs and talk to ten guys you can be sure nine of them play in a band! The bad thing is there is no underground movement here anymore. Going to a show with local band's ten years ago would mean at least 300 people, now you can be lucky if 50 shows up!
Johan HeggI don't know if it's true that most people don't know this, but the reason that I play music is because of my favourite band of all time - AC/DC.
Jeremy FisherI 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 MarionI feel like there's this weird thing that as a feminist band you get put in this role as ambassadors.
Kathleen HannaHe had found the band of jackals he needed. But as Jack McCall rode through the center of town, he experienced the terrifying certainty that a man faces when he's about to make his own name famous. He lacked both a hero's calm and a coward's resolve to survive at any price.
Walter HillEmma 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'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.
Nicholas ThorburnMy Chemical Romance is done. But it can never die. It is alive in me, in the guys, and it is alive inside all of you. I always knew that, and I think you did too. Because it is not a band- it is an idea.
Gerard Way