Top 50 Rick Nielsen Quotes

Every person I’ve ever met always thinks their parents are weird.

I think I’ve probably had one of my guitars on display at every Hard Rock Cafe in the world.

If we waited for a hit record to tour, we would never have toured.

I love to be the loudest thing in the room.

One reason I rarely listen to radio is they don’t play our music much.

I think every one of our songs could be a Top 10 record.

I have four warehouses full of stuff. I have every boarding pass of every flight I’ve ever been on. I have all the old contracts that we had from all the clubs and concerts we played, every one of them, up from 1980. Guitar picks and amps – it goes on and on.

We’ve got the pretty-boy lead singer and the fat, dumpy drummer, and I’m the zany guitarist. Sure, we’ve played up the image at times. But it’s the music that matters most.

If you’re going to be ridiculous, be over-the-top ridiculous.

I feel like such an idiot… you know, that our band didn’t break up just so we can re-form and become more and more popular.

If you start having to tell people you’re cool, you’re not.

I always use my Les Paul. I have a Hamer as well. I use a Tele and an Esquire – once in a while, I will use a Strat, and I never use any pedals… except for in my car.

I always hated watching bands: the guy would break a string or be out of tune, and I have perfect pitch, so it would always tick me off when a guy is up there, and he’d break a string.

If you can make it in Rockford, you can make it anywhere.

I’ve owned about 2,000 guitars through the years because I’ve traded a lot and given away and sold some stuff.

I never tried to emulate The Beatles, and I never really wanted to be like The Rolling Stones. I never really felt that I had the look or the demeanor of veteran musicians.

People are like, ‘Why are you playing that five-neck guitar?’ I want to hurt. I want to play.

I never wanted to be Keith Richards or Jimmy Page.

To me, a day off is sitting at a piano or with a guitar and writing.

We tried to act trendy. We took one of our songs and tried to make a dance mix. They put it on the turntables, unannounced, in Los Angeles and New York the same weekend, where they had a big dance crowd going wild. It cleared the floor on both coasts.

I don’t like the term ‘rock star.’

I took one guitar lesson, and they wanted me to play ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ or ‘Michael Row the Boat Ashore,’ and that was the last guitar lesson that I ever took, so I taught myself what I wanted to know.

Living someplace like L.A. seemed awful to me.

I never went to any high school dances or proms unless I was playing in them.

Some bands, they’re too snooty, or they think they’re too this or that and wouldn’t talk to us. And some other bands are afraid to talk to us.

We do try to be entertainers, but we’re musicians first, and we try to showcase the music.

I was never going to be very cute. I always looked for the best people to play with and, ’cause, to make myself look better.

My parents were opera singers. I didn’t want to play opera because I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t want to play their music; I wanted to play the music that I wanted to play, and I’m so lucky that today I get to play that music, even though I don’t like every song I write.

I actually did try to emigrate to Australia a long time ago.

I always thought of myself as more of a rhythm player than a big soloist.

In 1977, I had Paul Rivera hotrod six Fender Deluxes for me. At that time, a lot of studio guys in L.A. were using those – not so much live guys but studio guys. They had terrific tone and great technique, and I was like, ‘Well, I like having terrific tone even though I don’t have any technique.’

It’s an honor that people give a crap about us. We’re in a rock band; we’re not supposed to be treated with any respect.

I’ve taken all the mirrors out of my house because when I’m playing onstage, I feel like I’m still in high school. I feel like that kid that wanted to play in his first band, and then I look in a mirror, and it’s like, ‘Uh-oh!’ It ain’t pretty.

I got to work with John Lennon. That was pretty cool.

We played with Rush somewhere way early in our career.

When I write songs, it’s just me and a cassette player – or at least it used to be before smartphones – to quickly record a basic idea.

Hendrix was a different kind of guitar player. It was like, ‘Holy cow, this guy can sing, he can play all this weird stuff… what is this?’ It was a new kind of music.

I’m kind of a goony guy, a dweeb or a geek.

There’s no way we could make up what we are. The group is just what everyone is. Each of us has a different audience.

We’re Cheap Trick, and the majority of people know about three songs, and the real huge fans know about eight. There are 292 songs people have never heard.

Cheap Trick have always prided ourselves on being groundbreaking.

My parents were both opera singers, and they also were both heavily into religious and church music.

I’m a normal person. I don’t see where people come off saying I’m crazy.

We may not be proud of every song we’ve ever done – or been forced to do – but I believe we’ve done more than meets the eye.

I like Harvey Mandel.

We all record together. We do it live; then, after that, we do overdubs, if we need to, to repair stuff. Usually when we do stuff, we have to make sure we get the bass and drums down, and by doing it live, you’re actually playing the song. You’re not piecing together a song.

We’re basically a rock band – guitar, bass, drums and vocals. But we take it further than that. We can be rotten, dirty, and heavy as anyone, but at the same time, we’ve got a lot of melody.

The Sex Pistols had it all – they had the snarl, they had the I-don’t-give-a-crap attitude – plus, they could play.

When we toured with AC/DC, we always had to bring our A game. They really felt like our equals.

I was three years old, and I walked onstage during a performance that my father was a tenor in ‘The Barber of Seville.’ I walked out onstage, and people started laughing and clapping, and that was it. That was all it took. Laughing and clapping, I still enjoy today.