The only thing that was economic, I might say, about my music career, aside from the fact that I did everybody’s tax returns in the band, was the decision I made to leave the music business on economic grounds.
My mother was really into big band. It was played in the house all the time.
Steeler was a good start for my career. They didn’t play anything dangerous – everything was formulaic – but I played all this crazy stuff on top of it, and that turned out to be an interesting combination. But by the time ‘Steeler’ came out, I was already out of the band.
Rock and roll doesn’t necessarily mean a band. It doesn’t mean a singer, and it doesn’t mean a lyric, really. It’s that question of trying to be immortal.
Hi, I’m Jeff Healy of the Jeff Healy band. Don’t drink and drive. I don’t… you’re blind!
When you’re in a band that’s so big when you’re young, you kind of lose your identity a little bit. You just become part of the band. I just needed to get away from it.
My dad was in a Beatles cover band. My mom wore Candies and belly buttons. The people in our family were very glamorous. They wore pearls like Jackie O.
Dire Straits is a great band. Someone tells you they like ‘Brothers in Arms’ and immediately you know they’re a stupid annoying git.
After I left D.C. to join Black Flag, I felt I was in a band.
I remember Glenn Miller coming to me once, before he had his own band, saying, How do you do it? How do you get started? It’s so difficult. I told him, I don’t know but whatever you do don’t stop. Just keep on going.
It’s not important to how the band functions or to what we do. That’s just many people’s opinions on what they see. A lot of people project stuff on you, but that’s okay.
From the beginning of Queen there was such momentum that I never had any time to do anything else. My energy was 95% focused on the band.
I left school and didn’t go to university to be in a band.
The punk rockers said, ‘Learn three chords and form a band.’ And we thought, ‘Why learn any chords?’ We wanted to make music like Ford made cars on the industrial belt. Industrial music for industrial people.
I 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.
We ceased to be a band the moment we made it. It left us with nothing. We felt like a failure although we had commercial success.
See, I never wrote arrangements for the band for Judy Garland; I did strictly special material, special lyrics, put together all of her medleys.
I’m not a great band member; I’m more of a band leader.
But we’re very much an American band and that’s that. I think that’s part of the appeal outside of this country and it might be part of the reason people turned away from us within this country, because familiarity breeds contempt.
I had to get out of my record deal that I signed with my previous band and get a full solo record deal going so, with all of the paperwork that, that entails it did take a while.
Most people can’t tell now who wrote what. I like that blurring of identities within the band. because it becomes a unified thing that can’t be related to other forms of historical poetry.
I just started as a part of the public school music program. I took lessons at the school every Friday and was a part of the school band. I was just a normal kid taking instrumental lessons at school, nothing special.
I had to seal off my feelings about Stevie while seeing her every day and having to help her, too. But you get on with it. What was happening to the band was much bigger than any of that.
Just blow in it and sound bad for about a year and then make it sound a little bit better, and you get a little band together, and then you get a few jobs. You take four guys that sound half bad, but if they’re 25 percent each, they can give 100 percent, you know?
With four perfectionists in the band, we have a hard time reaching perfection.
But I can tell you that my favourite singer is Shania Twain and my favourite band is Lonestar.
But then when he left, I realized that it was harder to write songs and feel spiritually connected to art and music as a band. When he came back I felt it again, instantaneously.
It’s a really bad idea to be in a band and get involved with each other.
The chemistry that you get from living with your band and creating music and recording with your band translates to the stage.
I was a good amateur but only an average professional. I soon realized that there was a limit to how far I could rise in the music business, so I left the band and enrolled at New York University.
I always wanted to be in a band with a bunch of dudes who loved Green Day and all that.
When I was a kid, I used to make skateboarding videos, and I would pretend to be in a band and make rock videos that I’d edit with two VCRs.
I listen to everything that comes in. I’m not real worried about demo sound quality. I can hear through that sort of thing. If a band can play, then they can play.
Touring, and being in a band, it’s almost like the other stuff, the other parts of life, get put on hold.
All the art for Tool is done by the me and the band.
My manager, my band members, we’re all good friends. You need that because a lot of times an artist will be so sheltered he will lose touch with what the fans want.
We worked as a team… I was one of the band.
Pentatonix has always been keen on emphasizing the diversity of each individual band member.
Def Leppard is obviously a different band that we are, but the music work well tighter. And the audiences seem work well together too. We are opening, but we’re having a good time.
We come from a more alternative rock band background, and it’s interesting to see the things that people think we should or shouldn’t do since our music is a little bit poppier.
One performer whose band played my music better than I could myself was Art Farmer. He recorded ‘Sing Me Softly of the Blues’ and ‘Ad Infinitum’.
I am laughably aggressive, and the rest of the band is very laid back, so we mix well.
I grew up with Al Jarreau. We had a band together and worked these places for three years when neither one of us knew we could make a living doing music.
So basically the understanding on these so-called reissues is that they were done behind my back, without my permission, and the band informed me that I would no longer be paid on them at all.
As soon as it was understood that we could handle things in our own way, it was the thrill of my life to walk out on that stage with people just hemming the band in.
Marc Bolan had inspired so many people to pick up a guitar and join a band.
Now, when you’ve been in the band for three years, you get used to the position, in a sense. I don’t think about it every day like, ‘Oh my God, I’m the singer of Nightwish!’
The great thing about being on tour is that… the band plays at night and other than that we have a lot of free time.
Also there’s two sides of it, I mean, a band like us, at our level and the way we have to promote ourselves and usually radio just completely turns their back on us, at the same time I think Mp3s help promote us somewhat, spreading the word about the album and stuff.
But the irony is that because the band isn’t the focus any more, it allows me the chance to enjoy being a member of Def Leppard much more.
I have always had a tremendous amount of energy and any band I was ever in from the age of fourteen, I would always be the one who would describe the future and vibe everyone up.
I didn’t love Jim Morrison. There was something very reptilian about him. And I didn’t care for his singing, but his band! The Doors were fantastic.
The biggest problem in rock journalism is that often the writer’s main motivation is to become friends with the band. They’re not really journalists; they’re people who want to be involved in rock and roll.
I always saw being in a band a full time job.
Think about what makes a band burn out. They get too successful too fast. And then they take it for granted. And they get entitled. And they get picky. We don’t ever allow ourselves that possibility.
They tried to get me to use a pick when I first joined the band. They had certain things they thought were appropriate. I tried to adapt as much as I could.
Everyone always says, ‘When you look at a boy band, one of them has to be gay.’ No, they don’t.
Early on, I was into David Bowie. Then someone in the band suggested I try a Bryan Ferry type of thing. That’s when I started wearing three-piece suits. It wasn’t unnatural for me.
We were friends for a year before we started playing music together. We both think it’s pretty important. Tyler’s my friend before he’s a guy in my band, and when we talk to each other about things, it comes from a friend standpoint, not just a business standpoint.
I picked all the tunes before I went to Memphis, and the band was all set. Willie Mitchell is an arranger like I am, and he let me do what I had to do.
Being chronically shy I needed to create a persona for myself and be involved with a band where I could be ruler of my own kingdom. Then Pulp became hugely popular and I lost control of it, which is when it all went wrong.
