Top 50 David Bryan Quotes

We really earned our keep by going door to door, going to every town, playing in every club.

I grew up as one of the few Jews in Edison, and I had people tell me they hated me because of my religion.

I don’t like it when bands don’t want to play that one song everybody wants to hear. I think that’s cheating everybody, and I think it’s selfish of an artist to do that.

A musical is really one of the most complicated beasts. It’s a play, and there’s music… and there’s dancing… it’s unbelievably satisfying to get something up out of your brain onto a piece of paper … and start the process and then see it on the stage.

Whether you’re black or white, you’re a human – and that’s what matters.

I’ve been playing piano since I was 7. I took 15 years of lessons. I’ve got a lot of miles on these hands.

I think, bad times, I sit down and I play – there’s definitely certain songs that touch in certain ways. I go back to ‘Moonlight Sonata’ by Beethoven; that usually takes care of everything.

I think growing up in the shadow of New York shaped me for life. Hey, you come from Jersey, you get used to being dumped on by the big city.

I’m in a very successful band. We all love each other. It ain’t ever breaking up. I also have a terrific hobby that became a full-time job. My only problem? There’s not enough time to sleep in my world.

Why would we want to do an experimental album? That’s just selfish.

It’s funny – Americans are the colonials who ran away from the royals, and yet we’re fascinated by them.

Everybody in the world has problems, and the nice thing about entertainment is you get to forget about those problems and have a good time for a couple of hours.

We thought the hardest thing in the world was to get a record deal, then the hardest was to get a No. 1 record, and then the hardest thing is to stay at the top. It’s a lot of work.

When we get on stage, naturally, you just get out there and work it as hard as you humanly possibly can do it.

I think ‘Slippery When Wet’ was the turning point, where our records represent our energy that we do live.

When I’m playing in the band, I’m sweating – giving 120 percent.

In times of joy and sorrow, love or hate, peace and unrest, music has always been an important outlet for expressing our emotions individually and as a nation.

I just write the way I feel, and if it feels good to me, hopefully everybody likes it.

When I’m writing Broadway, it’s for a character, a man, a woman, an old guy, a kid. In the band, you’re talking in your own voice in the lyrics, saying what you think or feel. On Broadway, you’re expressing that through a character.

It’s so much fun to be on stage and play. It really is.

I remember that poster of Led Zeppelin with the plane. I had it on my wall when I was a kid. I thought that was the coolest. It amazes me that it came true.

We’ve always been just an American rock n’ roll band.

When I was growing up, there was hate. I looked around and saw that it was so wrong. I got to go round the world with my rock band, and you can bring harmony.

The American Music Awards mean more to us; that’s a people’s award, and we’re a people’s band. The Grammys are the critics.

We’ve always been a band of the people, and we will always remain a band of the people.

We play anywhere around two, 2 hours, so we’re always in shape, but you’ve got to get yourself in super shape so you can sing that long, play that long, and feel strong.

My father was a very big musical influence on me. He was a trumpet player. And that’s what I started with. Then, when I was 7, my parents introduced me to the piano.

I’m a good Jewish boy from Edison, New Jersey, so I went and saw ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ because you have to: that’s part of your bar mitzvah experience.

There’s trials and tribulations in a band.

I love my band. I love to play. I love to write.

How do we keep it up? Because that’s what we do; we’re musicians, and we love to play and make music. And with every album, we get better, and with every tour, we get better.

It’s a sense of pride, a sense of you set out to get a record deal, and we got that. We set out to get a No. 1 record, and then we got that. Then you say, ‘Wow, that was impossible and now even more impossible is to stay No. 1 and stay current and put out new records that people care about,’ and we really stuck to that.

I’m not a guy who grew up in theater. I’ve always played in rock bands.

We strive to have new records. We strive to have new songs on the radio. That feels good that we can gain those new fans and still bring out our fans that have been with us for some of the ride or all of the ride.

When it comes to writing musicals, you write the best piece you can. Then, its destiny is in the hands of the actors and the director.

Every time you’re on stage, you look out at a packed house, people all the way up to the top, people having a blast, everybody forgetting about the world for a couple hours. That’s a special thing.

There’s no way you can imagine going from kids in high school to being the best band in the world.

Some I want to see just for curiosity. But no, I don’t really rush out to see a bunch of musicals.

People ask me, ‘Is there pressure to win a Tony for your next one?’ I’ve got three on my mantelpiece; I’m good. If that’s the end of the story, I’m fine.

Musicals weren’t on my radar.

I’ve been through a lot of experiences in my life being in the biggest band in the world.

You start out with your eyes wide open, and you’ve got dreams, and we worked really, really hard, and ours came true. So – and we’re fortunate enough to keep putting out number one records, and we’re fortunate enough to get out there and keep playing, and we truly have a blast.

We would say we would play every pay toilet and use our own change. Across America and across the world, we just kept going and going.

We started out a long time ago, and we’ve managed to just keep writing current songs and have No. 1 current records.

I remember, when I was very young and going to the Fillmore East and watching three of my favorite bands in one night, I’d want a hit. I want to hear the songs that brought them to that pinnacle of success.

When I was growing up, I had more comedy albums than musical ones. George Carlin, Cheech and Chong, Steve Martin, Richard Pryor – those were my main men.

Most of Broadway is based on a movie or a book. You don’t see many original musicals.

Before ‘Memphis,’ I had never considered working on a musical. But when Joe DiPietro sent me the script, I heard the entire score in my head.

In rock n’ roll, there are notes that aren’t like notes. They’re something in between, and it’s the way you scoop into it.

I’d say that 98 percent of the bands we’ve played with through the years have either broken up or are stuck in some kind of ’80s revival now.