Popular quotes about Band! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 3
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 CoreaThe band? No way! There ain't no band. The band is not 'the band' right now. It's just three guys.
James HetfieldI had a ten-piece band when I was 21 years old, the Bruce Springsteen Band. This is just a slightly expanded version of a band I had before I ever signed a record contract. We had singers and horns.
Bruce SpringsteenI 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.
Les ClaypoolA 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. CastiWhen I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily I should have been in that band - or at least in a Pixies cover band.
Kurt CobainFor 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.
Colin LindenI 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.
David TornI wouldn't call Super Furry Animals a political band, but we've all grown up in politically charged households, and we have a lot of political debates within the band. Obviously we don't think exactly alike, but we agree on a lot of points, and if something pisses us off, we're usually pretty open about it and very happy to share our views with other people. But I mean, we got together as a band because of our love of music.
Gruff RhysAll those experiences were a chance to learn more about music. Playing with the Valley band is like such a "live" band. I mean, really, in many ways Bright Eyes is really a studio project. We form bands to tour, but it really is - you know, we take the songs and we figure out how to decorate them and it's all in the studio, we build the songs that way. Whereas Mystic Valley Band was the exact opposite, where everybody knows what they are gonna be playing on the song and there's sort of a general stylistic approach, and then it's just plug in and play.
Conor OberstCommunication between band-mates is imperative. Communication is the key to any healthy relationship. If I need to be checked, I expect to hear it put in plain words what my faults are, and give my band-mates the ultimate consideration by shutting up and listening, then acting on the advice given. Same goes for anyone else in any band.
Phil AnselmoI think that every band is different, and in fact that's one of the biggest problems with the old-school music industry is that... one band would be successful according to a certain approach, and then every other band in the label gets sent down the same tube.
Emily HainesI 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.
Steven Van ZandtI think that was going on with bands like The Strokes was that the idea of the band, a real band, was making a comeback. My brother in law is an example- before he was listening to some country music, even some of that awful nu-metal stuff , but there weren't many options really.
James MercerIt was an important period for us, because even though we weren't a "punk band", and what became a model for a punk band, we were able to be dragged along by the spirit of that time.
Stephen MallinderI was in a band when I was 15. We were a glam band. Then I couldn't afford to buy makeup. At the time that was the thing.
Layne StaleyI 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.
Elizabeth BanksSome of the best trades come when everyone gets very panicky. The crowd can often act very stupidly in the markets. You can picture price fluctuations around an equilibrium level as a rubber band being stretched -- if it gets pulled too far, eventually it will snap back. As a short-term trader, I try to wait until the rubber band is stretched to its extreme point.
Linda Bradford RaschkeI always just wanted to be the singer or the bass player in the band. I'd love to have a band, where I was obviously the singer, but where it wasn't me, it wasn't my name.
Bryan AdamsI mean I like pop music, and I like heavy music and, stuff that I like... the band I've signed on to our label right now; they're called The Sounds. They're kind of like a new-wave pop band.
James IhaThe 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 HansonWe do what we want to do. We write songs. We try not to repeat ourselves too much. We have our own sound and our own way of doing things. Up until now it has always been enjoyable. None of the members have ever got to the point where they don't want to be involved in it ... It's not entirely possible for me to stand back and look at the Rolling Stones because being a part of it you can't. I wish that I could just sit in the audience for one night and see the show. Everyone in the band has said that at some point. But then you wouldn't be seeing the whole band. And that's the problem with that.
Keith RichardsI'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.
Dawn AngeliqueWe 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 SchulthiseI think I'm just trying to show a more mature side of the band and I think we've really come into the sound of our band. With every album we've grown, but I think this is just a really good picture of where we are right now and how we feel our music represents us. Under the thumb of other record companies we haven't had as much creative control and I think with this record we really did our own thing.
Jason C. MillerI grew up singing in Kansas. My dad had a band when I was growing up. So I sang in church and school and started singing with his band when I was seven. So I've been singing all my life.
Martina McBrideYou know somethin', man? Some day I'm gonna be walkin' up the street one way and you're gonna be comin' down the other way, and we're gonna pass each other and I'm gonna say 'Hello, best white band in the world' and you're gonna say 'Hello, best colored band in the world.
Chick WebbI think that Phish has been a band, we've all had- I've had a great life growing up and everybody in my band's had a really good life, none of us have got anything to complain about at all.
Jon FishmanA 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 MaddenI 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 RossenSo, I play in a band. It's a really underground band. Super underground. Very underground. Like, we don't even actually play.
Greg BehrendtI'm 13 to 17, 18 years old; I thought that's what the world was like. It never occurred to me that this was a very unusual period in music history. So I went on assuming that one day I'm going to have my band like my heroes had their own band. So people ask me this question all the time - they go, "Bass is basically a background instrument." The other thing is that in urban music, Black music, the bass has a much higher profile.
Marcus MillerA band isn't a band unless they're playing together. Otherwise it's just five guys that are living off their royalty checks.
Joe PerryKeeping fans loyal is a delicate balance. Therein lies the challenge for any band that's more than a couple albums deep. It's like, how do you continue to make records that are representative of who you are that your fans will recognize as your band, while still trying to push things forward and present new sounds for people.
Ben GibbardI'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 DittoI keep telling Ron Lorman and them in the control room, "It's my band! The reason I have a band is because I can't stand for somebody to tell me what to do."
Miles DavisI 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.
Yukimi NaganoWell 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 YorkeAs 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 WeberYouths 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.
Henry RollinsWe 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 CorganWhen you're looking for a band name, I know it sounds weird, but everything you look at, everything you observe and read, you kind of think, 'Man, maybe that could be our band name.
Dave HaywoodThe bands of perception vary greatly. There is the human band of perception. There are lots of different bands of perception. Simply because we are in one band of perception, doesn't mean others are not there.
Frederick LenzWe started the band with a work ethic of 'it's us against the world' and that is something that our fans aligned with, too. Together, we speak a common language. I think that motto has helped us keep the creative force alive all these years while the fans have kept the fire burning for us to always be excited to create new music for them. Without the fans, we are a band without a home.
David EllefsonIt 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.
Steve Albini