Top 60 Brian Fallon Quotes

I went to the Louvre in Paris, and I saw all the paintings and the Mona Lisa. You don’t really see something like that every day. I was looking at it, and everything else in the room just shut out. Like, Leonardo Da Vinci painted this thing – this is unreal that he touched that. It had this crazy effect on me.

I think I lose myself in interviews sometimes.

Everyone should see ‘A Nightmare Before Christmas,’ hear ‘London Calling,’ and read ‘Great Expectations.’

I must’ve been about 7 or 8 when I realized I wanted to perform in some way.

When I first started fingerpicking, the first thing I learned was ‘Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright’ from Bob Dylan.

There are two things that matter when you’re making music. First, that you’re doing what you love, even if it’s crazy and other people tell you it’s crazy. The second thing is the only people you really need to worry about are the people who love your music, not the people who speak badly about it.

When you set out to carry on a tradition as deep rooted as folk music is, you’ve got to have your story together. You’ve got to study and have a foundation. Jeffrey Foucault has that foundation, and you can hear it in his voice, and feel it in his music. He’s got an understanding that you don’t hear that often.

One day, I was just fingering around on the keys of a Fender Rhodes piano, and I came up with this little riff, and all of a sudden, it morphed into a song. It had never been touched by a guitar, which was very weird for us. ‘Under the Ground’ is the first song I have ever written that had nothing to do with the guitar.

You can’t shape it. You can’t change it. Your life is what it is.

We want to be big… we want to be a big band, but we don’t want to be your best friends.

It’s all about knowing your audience. When I buy a record by a band and it sounds completely different, I’m just like, ‘Why didn’t you change your band name?’

I’m from New Jersey, the Shore, and Asbury Park and all that goes with that. I wouldn’t want to mess around with that. I like New Jersey. There are nice people here.

We come from that school where we don’t believe we’re different from you, and it’s insulting to me on some kind of weird level that musicians are put on a pedestal.

I can’t really see myself writing about politics because I’m not really into it, and one of the worst things you can do is write about things you’re not into.

I sure wish I’d written ‘One’ by U2.

The Gaslight Anthem is very streamlined. We don’t usually use organs and strings and things like that.

I just like a good song, it doesn’t matter. I mean, I am into girl groups and stuff like that. I listen to anything.

When Tupac came out, my writing changed for sure. I learned from it. It was a cultural thing.

I’ve spent my life playing music.

I don’t go to rock bars. Why would I go to rock bars? I can do that every night; it’s boring.

Songs are like anything else – they dictate to you which ones go together and which ones don’t.

I don’t mean it egotistically, but I’ve been given the chance to be in front of people and sing, and I feel that it’s part of my job and my duty – especially where I’m from – to speak the language of the people I’m around and speak for them.

The first time I heard ‘White Man in Hammersmith Palais,’ I loved the vulnerability in the music and the lyrics.

Tom Waits is someone who has really struck me, ever since I was a kid. He’s really a big deal for me.

Why blow money on a tour bus when you could get your mom a nice dress?

When you’re older, you realize a little bit more hard truths. You are who you are. And the people that like you, they like you for being you.

The Clash will always be from London, and we will always be from New Jersey. But New Jersey doesn’t create us.

Major labels have always been around our band since the beginning, and we just waited. We knew we had to do some things, and we needed to grow as a band before we made that step. We needed to do it our way and not do it how it works for other people.

With ‘Get Hurt,’ we wanted to see where else we could go with the band. We thought it was time to change things up a bit. The song itself is similar to the feeling of a wreck you see coming, but long past the point you can avoid it.

Every time I look at the Eiffel Tower, it completely blows my mind.

I would love to learn how to paint motorcycles and stuff like that. I really, really am fascinated by that.

Fans look up to us, and that’s creepy.

There’s never going to be a new Beatles because we don’t consume things in that way anymore.

I think some people don’t even know what they’re talking about, and they just start talking with an opinion, not even asking questions.

I don’t envy anybody else’s career because I feel they’ve earned where they’re at and worked hard. I wouldn’t mind Jack White’s gig, though. He does it all!

I like building houses, working as a carpenter, painting. You work with your hands to the best of your ability, and at the end of the day, you go home with some satisfaction: ‘I built that!’

A lot of people get writer’s block, and I think you just have to show up for work, sit down, and be like, ‘I’m here.’ You have to stay confident and positive that you’re going to write something.

Where I live, every band ever comes through, and you can see anything you want, pretty much.

I had a five-year plan to get to 500-seat venues and tour by ourselves and fill a room everywhere we go. I figured we could make a living off that. As long as you buy nothing stupid, you’ll be OK.

I don’t want to be the mayor of New Jersey.

When ‘American Slang’ came out, everyone was like, ‘This is the next big band in the world, and this is blah blah blah Bruce Springsteen Junior and blah blah blah,’ and I was just like, ‘I don’t know what that means. I don’t know. We’ll see.’

When you finish a record, I look at it like a photograph. It’s already taken. You got it the way you wanted it to be. You edit it, make sure the light and contrast are right, then you just put it away, and that’s your photograph. Then you don’t really think about it anymore.

Everyone always says, ‘We don’t want to be pigeonholed.’ But sometimes, your pigeonhole is a great place to be.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized the element that sounds like The Gaslight Anthem that’s mine is always going to be me. The other three-fourths of it is going to be the other guys. I can’t stop doing what I do naturally, whether I’m in The Gaslight Anthem or my own thing.

We didn’t invent this – this rock n’ roll thing.

We built something very special with Gaslight, and we don’t want to mess with that sound too much. But I’ve always wanted to do a record where I can put strings or organs or pianos or whatever on it.

You just have to know your story from the beginning. You have to know what you’re going for and be honest with people about that. Don’t sit there and say you’re gonna be a DIY punk band for your whole life and then move on to arenas; you can’t do that because then people don’t trust you anymore.

I’ve never read ‘The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe,’ but his later works are about whether God is real.

I spend my money on cars. That’s why I have a Challenger. It’s a muscle car, like a Mustang. It’s big and rumbly.

It’s a beautiful thing, to start over.

People don’t remember that during the Fifties and Sixties there was a Cold War, and kids were getting under their desks during school because they thought they were going to get bombed. So it wasn’t really that ideal at all.

You get a realisation at some point in your career that whatever it is you do, you can no longer continue to do it. You just realise you can’t put out the same records forever.

For me, there’s no point in being an artist and putting yourself out there if you’re not going to really put yourself out there.

If you’re just making a record to pay the bills, that’s not a great idea because chances are it might not come out that good.

You never get away from that thing in your hometown that it has over you. You don’t outgrow where you come from.

I think Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’ is probably the best comeback or mid-career record that any band has done.

At the end of the day, you can’t reinvent yourself past a point, because you are you, and there are things that are inherently you that are always going to be there.

I’m on the phone with this guy, and he says to me, ‘People compare you to Bruce Springsteen. I don’t think you’ve written a song as good as ‘Dancing in the Dark’ or ‘I’m on Fire.” And all I could think was, ‘Me neither!’

I don’t want to be a lead player. I don’t want to shred and play fast licks. I just want to be the best rhythm section ever.

I did the coffee house thing – we have coffee houses where people play, or we used to – and when I was 14, I started there. Just played all the time. Every weekend I had a show, or every Thursday. Open-mic nights, the whole thing.