What music I listen to day to day changes very, very much. I can go from bluegrass to heavy metal, to blues, to classical and big band and then go to pop and rap.
‘Hot Fuss’ was all based on fantasy. The English influences, the makeup – they were what I imagined rock was. I’m a dreamer, you know? So I dug into that dream and made ‘Hot Fuss.’ But hearing people call us ‘the best British band from America’ made me wonder about my family and who I was.
Because when we are right there is not a band in the world that can touch us!
Mike is a genius guitar player and keyboard player. I realized that, with this group, I just joined Mike Keneally’s band!
Queen has always been my favorite band. Freddie is the greatest singer, ever, is the way I look at it. The other thing about Queen for me is they embraced so many different styles.
My love for the band is still there. It hasn’t changed, maybe that’s why it’s so painful these days.
As a solo artist, I just felt cemented in front of the mike stand. There was very little time to play with the audience and be a band member.
I was playing with the Aquabats, and then I quit to join a band called Suicide Machine in Detroit.
It’s like that with what sort of ideas people outside of the band have of HIM. They all see it through a different lens as well which is beautiful. Hopefully, it makes it an endless topic of conversation.
The rest of the band had a cynical view towards the way ‘Tusk’ was made and the reasons why I thought it was important to move into new territory. It wasn’t just negativity. There was open hostility. Then I got a certain amount of flak because it didn’t sell as many as ‘Rumours.’
I started playing piano with a little band in high school. I was terrible. I thought I had absolutely no talent. I couldn’t keep time. I only got into McGill, which was a lousy music school, because they were taking American music students.
I wanted to be in a punk band before I had even heard any punk music.
Dinosaur Jr. in their live capacity are a band that put me in a state of such overwhelming rock that it often takes quite a while to come down.
Major labels blow all their money massively and blame it on the band.
Some musicians make and record music; other musicians play in a band… I just make and record music, and I don’t feel a part of anything in any music business.
I’d always thought the Rats were good fun, but one of the very nice things about being of Saga age is that I can actually look back and think, When I was younger I was in a great band. It was always a collective thing.
Queen is my all-time favorite band in history. I was an obsessive growing up after I discovered them at 10 at summer camp.
I love Les Beaux Peeps. Everyone in that band works together really well. I used to go out to see bands a lot; now it seems there just aren’t any I like.
I wouldn’t do go to another band.
There are a couple different factors that play into the decision of which songs to cover. It could either be we’re really inspired by a song that’s just come out or inspired by an international classic, but either way we bring it to the band.
Disharmony is natural in any band.
The relationship between ‘My Chemical Romance’ and Michael Pedicone is over. He was caught red-handed stealing from the band and confessed to police after our show last night in Auburn, Washington. We are heartbroken and sick to our stomachs over this entire situation.
Actually, there was another band where we were three girls, around ’84 when I met John Zorn, called Sunset Chorus. It was just bass and drums and guitar- we didn’t make any records but we played a lot of different clubs in New York.
The Doors were successful. It was Jim Morrison as the centre and the figure and the spokesman, the figurehead, but we were all into the same thing. That’s why we were a band.
The band has always stayed close to its fans and not sold out. That’s a very rare thing. I can see how rare that is having been outside of the band for eight years. Maiden has integrity. I think people appreciate that.
I used to be a drummer in a band, and I really loved playing the drums, so I look forward to the right opportunity to do that at some point. Maybe even on TV. Every single live performance I’m doing on TV, I want it to be different and unique.
And I played in jazz band as well during all three years in school.
A good band is like a team. You want to have the right balance. It’s not always the best people you need, but the right ones for the job.
However, the radio and national media depend much more on the hype from a good record label, and from a ‘ buzz ‘ about a band, then from just one or two good shows. There are a lot of artists that have a ton of good press going for them, and still do not make it big in the US.
When I auditioned for my high school band the band director was excited because my father was known to be a great musician. When he heard me, he said ‘Are you sure you’re Ellis’s son?’
I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. It reminds me of when we were just starting out because we would open for other bands in the beginning.
My parents are actually very famous singers in Bulgaria. My dad was in a rock band, and my mom was in a pop group. They met, fell in love, and actually formed a group together to escape the country because it was Communist, and they couldn’t leave. They didn’t know any English but eventually found their way to America.
In my relationship with a young guy I was going with in a band – his name was Sylvester, and I think he had another little girl on the side – I told him, ‘If you lose me, you’re going to lose a good thing.’ And I went home and put that poem to music.
Cowboy boots you can’t wear unless you actually are a cowboy or in a Status Quo tribute band, or over 60; there’s something about a retiring gent in cowboy boots that looks sort of presidential.
As a kid, I was into music, played guitar in a band. Then I started acting in plays in junior high school and just got lost in the puzzle of acting, the magic of it. I think it was an escape for me.
The photograph, the clothes, the sets – this was about 1974, and I started hanging out with my friend Richard Sold, who was playing in a band with Patti Smith.
I played trumpet in school once because I joined band because a cute boy played trumpet too. And I was really bad at trumpet.
One of the negative sides of a really intense arc as a touring band is there are big gaps in your memory because you’re so exhausted.
It’s nice to finally have a CD out which reflects my songwriting, my singing and the band that I have.
As a band gets more successful, there’s a danger of falling in love with your own shadow.
I could not finish the rest of the tours the band had planned. I was replaced by Matt Cameron. The next years of my life were about recovery, healing, and right living. I never lost the need to create.
I write the music, produce it and the band plays within the parameters that I set.
There was a band in Australia named Midnight Oil, and they were a very, very political, and they literally hit you over the head with a hammer. U2 sometimes can hit you over the head with a rubber hammer.
My dad was a real working musician in the late ’70s and early ’80s. He had a band that was signed to Elektra/Asylum and they would perform at like Madame Wong’s and Whiskey A Go Go all the time.
Almost every band has somebody who’s the main songwriter and who has a vision, a very clear idea of how a song should be.
I was trying to prove people wrong who said I wasn’t a good guy, and I was trying to be the person that other people thought I was – people who loved our band thought I was a god.
Nikki lives around the corner from me and I see him all the time. We talk a lot, and of course we’re still friends. That was our baby, Motley Crue, we put that band together.
They’ve gone to great length to disguise the fact that I’m not in the band, even sending out a photo to promoters with my picture in it which then winds up in some of the ads on the flyers.
If I could be in any band, I think it would have to be The Beatles. That would have been a lot of fun.
Deep Purple is a damn good band and we’ve made a niche in rock ‘n’ roll history. Maybe not a huge one but enough to be very proud of.
There’s no way we could play a country song as well as a country band or a Latin song as well as a Latin band. We could never expect to do that. We just keep doing what we do, what we know how to do. We sound like ourselves.
We are different people – you get a different take on the band whoever you speak to. Somehow, at the end of it, it goes through the filtering process and out comes the Radiohead thing.
The best thing about this band is I’m the leader!
It’s not every day you get to create a band like the Sex Pistols, and what it changed, on a musical level. I love that we’ve done something that was important.
I don’t play the bass. I’m not in a band. I tried to think of ways I could touch base with the troops and support what we’re doing.
It’s hard enough to make a good song and a good recording of that song. But to try to tailor it to some outside force is just like – It’s never been a factor in what I’ve done or what the band’s done.
It doesn’t really seem any different anywhere. I’d say it seems like we’re biggest in Australia. It’s just that we’ve always been this underground band and for some reason in the last month has been starting to go overground.
