Popular quotes about Band! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 25
My dad was all about music. He was a musician, leading a band when I was born. His band was active all through the 40s. He'd started it in the late 20s and 30s. According to the scrapbook, his band was doing quite well around the Boston area. During the Depression they were on radio. It was a jazz-oriented band. He was a trumpet player, and he wrote and arranged for the band. He taught me how to play the piano and read music, and taught me what he knew of standard tunes and so forth. It was a fantastic way to come up in music.
Chick CoreaWhat does surprise me, though, is the amount of attention this band [Guns'n'Roses] has garnered 11 years after the original lineup broke up. That's an interesting phenomenon. It was even interesting back in the day. I mean, [we were] this glorified garage band. It was a great band, but it was not the kind of band you expected to become what it has.
SlashWhen we opened Babbo, we were an indie band. Now we're kinda Apple. We have 19 restaurants and 2,800 employees, we are no longer perceived as the indie band although we think of ourselves as the indie band, and we operate our restaurants as individual indie bands.
Mario BataliI finally got to junior high and I got to start saxophone. There were a few of us that were in the beginner band in sixth grade that made it to the advanced band, which was called the morning band at our junior high school in Staten Island.
Jon GordonEvery band is different just because of the different combinations of people really are super unique to every band. The way you work together and the personalities that are being brought to the table. Our band is definitely the best combination of personalities I've worked with so far.
Ali KoehlerMy 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.
Willie NelsonI was raised in bars. My grandmother had one, and when I was 12 years old I'd go stay with her and that's where I got to watch her band play -- she had a seven or eight-piece band, and I would sit in the kitchen and peek through the door. I was kind of a 12-year-old bottle washer.
Toby KeithIt's better to be the largest independent band from Brazil instead of be the smallest mainstream band.
Fernanda TakaiThe difference between Tinted Windows and Hanson shows is a lot of just repertoire. Hanson has been a band for years - we have a lot of songs to pull from and it's a different dynamic - a common kind of thread. With Tinted Windows - it's kind of a little like "hey, we're this new band."
Taylor HansonThe 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.
Chuck BerryMy 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.
Demi LovatoI 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.
Johan RenckI brought the music out to L.A., and the producer Tommy LaPuma heard it and he said - "Man, I love it. Let's do it. Let's record it." I said, "Okay, where's the band?" He said, "We don't have a band. We want it to sound exactly like your demo." I said, "Well, I played all the instruments on the demo." You do that when you're making demos. You got your guitar, you got your sax. He said, "Well, I want it to sound just like that, so get all your instruments out here." So I ended up playing all the instruments.
Marcus MillerFor me personally, and as a band, there are a lot of challenges. Being in a band is like war, it's a battle - to focus, to really put together something that's formidable and then keeping everything together.
Erik RutanWith rock music, it usually revolves around the band. You go in as a band and probably take about a year to record an album. But for a hip-hop song, you can create a track and an idea with verses and choruses in a day, and get three different people on it. It seems like you're able to do more with hip-hop.
Travis BarkerA 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."
Benji MaddenWell, 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 GaynorWhen I showed โBlack and the Red IIIโ in Malmรถ, Sweden, it was a continuum - a band - all around the galleryseeing this huge space in the gallery in Malmรถ, I just took a deep breath and I put the paper around in a single band. Then I continued along, printing on the wall like a trompe lโoeil to reiterate the images in the work printed on paper that I had push-pinned to the wall. I literally took the rhythm and the images from โBlack and the Red IIIโ and continued that on the wall.
Nancy SperoIt's kind of dumb; everybody should be able to listen to the kind of music they want and just because you're a fan of a band for a longer period of time doesn't mean you have a greater stake of claim to the band or the music.
Ray ToroWhen I started making films I just decided "I'm the filmmaking equivalent of a garage band and I'll just make my garage band movies." But even the same musicians from garage bands would go to my movies and you could tell what they liked from the way that they dressed and they would be the first ones to walk out.
Guy MaddinI was really running a music school back then, because my band wasn't making any money. I keep talking about money, because most people don't understand the part of money in running a band.
Artie ShawI'm 90% performer, 10% musician. I've always said that Gossip are a band I would go see, not a band I would listen to.
Beth DittoThe reason I don't play any of the old songs is because I really honor my old band, and I think that those songs are best served within the context of that band.
Billy CorganI 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 WildhornIn 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.
Weyes BloodWell actually I'm not a man but a carrot. The band was eating salads one day and a carrot fell off of the salad bar onto a microphone and the band realized that they had just discovered something brilliant. Me.
Thom YorkeWhen I clicked into this idea of doing a band and examining a band as a dysfunctional family, I wanted to reverse that Rescue Me formula.
Denis LearyEverybody 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.
Nicholas ThorburnIt's true I've always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way.
Gerry MulliganThe 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 CormierI enjoy making music alone, and I like keeping my options open for how I release my own songs. But everybody in Grizzly Bear is full of ideas. So it's kind of boring to come to the band with a complete song and be like: "Here's what I want you to do." With this record, we wanted to make everything feel like everyone - music that we could never do on our own. That's a real gift, and it's one of the best things about being in a band like this.
Daniel RossenIt is really refreshing to hear a big band that has the ability to execute ensemble passages with swing and precision while retaining a "small group" feel during the solo sections. This kind of "tight, loose" approach is seldom heard in big bands, whether they are professional or not. Now, all the band needs is to hit the road and take the music around the world!
John PatitucciWe, Autolux band, write in very different ways; sometimes we play with the band and write music first and then form vocal parts and lyrics. Or I'll find some music, or a guitar part or something, and I'll just write an entire sketch of an idea from that. So I think things have always been that way, it's just that this time around we had some more obstacles off and on all the time.
Carla AzarI 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.
Colin HayI am Evanescence. I am the only original member. I have basically hired the band. Evanescence has become me. It is mine and it's exactly how I want it to be.
Amy LeeThere is always that one band that comes along when you are 14 or 15 years old that manages to hit you in just the right way and changes your whole perception of things.
Alex TurnerThere 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.
Jimmy PageEven though there's reasons to try things that may or may not work, it's still a real intimate way to finish the song with everybody right there in the band just locked in.
Stevie Ray VaughanThe course of the line we indicated as forming our grandest terrestrial fold [along the shores of Japan] returns upon itself. It is an endless fold, an endless band, the common possession of two sciences. It is geological in origin, geographical in effect. It is the wedding ring of geology and geography, uniting them at once and for ever in indissoluble union.
Charles LapworthThere 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.
Scott PuteskyNew 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 BarberBlackheart Records being 25 years old represents staying power and the fact that we weren't able to get a record out through conventional means, so we had to create this record company to put out our records if we wanted to be a band that had records to give out to their fans.
Joan Jett