When you work with a band, obviously you've got to present them with something they can get a hold of, so it has to be a little more fleshed out as a song. And then where it goes is more collaborative, obviously; it's more political possibly, certainly more a conscious process than a subconscious process, which the painting can be.
When you are in a band for a number of years you loose your identity in a way. You become a part of that band and then all of a sudden you are not part of that band. You are still the band without the other two members.
I mean, I don't think I would call Claus to do an album of big band tunes. You know, just like arrangers write for the artist they have in mind; you have to keep in mind if you're going to work with Claus Ogerman. You invite him to do what he does.
Every band I knew or played with had flyers and properly-recorded demos and contacts; I couldn't even get a gig.
I advise wannabe singers to form a band, practise in your garage if you have to, but do as many charity or open mic shows as possible to get experience. I sang for seven years before getting a record deal, and I was already loving what I was doing. I just got lucky and got discovered.
Even within the band, if I cannot manage to persuade the members of what I see to be the next course of action, how do you expect the group to deal with the expectations of thousands of people. It is not possible.
At 14, I was in my own little classic rock country band. Then, after high school, I started another band called Northern Comfort. That was based out of Chico, Calif.
There's poetry in being the band that can sell out Wembley but also makes a record in a garage. I don't like doing what people expect me to do.
Honestly, before I settled on a name for the Bon Iver project in general, Chigliak was in the running for what I was going to name the band.
I took my daughters to see Plastic Ono Band at the Orpheum in L.A. in 2012. It was an amazing experience because she is such a revolutionary artist. Everybody was like, 'Oh, it's Yoko, it's such a joke.' But it's no joke what she did, visually and musically. It's incredible.
Usually when I start a new project there's a fear of the unknown; maybe it's a band I've never been in the studio with before. People are so different. It's almost like you need to go through the process, discover and unlock what it is that makes that band that band. And a lot of times they don't know it.
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.
Gym Class is a band I am more directly involved with than any other band except for Fall Out Boy.
In 1996, I was in was in an acoustic kind of rock band, we were called Feeble. We were just playing locally.
I thought the best thing to do to bring me back to reality would be to have a child, and by the time I had my first, Taylor, when I was 25, we'd sold 35 million records as a band, and I'd had enough; I knew my sanity was more important than success.
By the time I did that third solo album, I'd finally learned how to do it, but I'd also learned that I liked being in a band.
A band is sort of like a star. It reaches a peak and burns out. To have five guys working in perfect harmony longer than a couple years is difficult.
Heart has always been a rock band. It's always been hard-rock.
We went on to become the No. 1 band in the country for three or four years. And that was probably the worst thing that could have happened to us.
I didn't have an agent, I didn't have a headshot. I didn't even know if anyone would know where to find me. I just went back to highschool and started playing with my band.
It was about this time that I began experiencing the beginnings of my battles with an anxiety disorder. We were touring a lot and there were some developing personal problems within the band.
My friend and I were talking about the band Limp Wrist, and how cool that name is, so we started bouncing other queer-punk band names off each other. The first one I thought of was The Power Bottoms, which I later shortened to Power Bottom.
Aesthetically, we were enormously successful. Economically... there was no success. It was all about music of the future and unfortunately it was a band that didn't have any future.
Then I came up with this crazy idea just to walk out on the stage with no band at all and just start singing whatever came to mind. I actually fought the idea for a while because it seemed almost too radical, but it became obvious what I was supposed to be doing.
Living composers writing for big band are very few and far between. There are not a lot of them, and I have a talent for doing it. I am zeroing in on what I do best.
My favorite band was The Band, and nobody compares in my mind with The Band.
The rock star stuff never came up for us. The Band was never attacked by groupies before, during or after any show that we ever played.
We have people in the band who don't drink or do drugs... some of us like to go sightseeing.
My mom passed away a day before high school started, and her dream was for me to be a full rock and roll guy, and play drums in a band.
Well, Steve Vai joined my dad's band right around the time when I actually started playing guitar. So he gave me a couple of lessons on fundamentals, and gave me some scales and practice things to work on. But I pretty much learned everything by ear.
I was in a little punk band and we put out a few punk records that weren't very political, at all.
There's sort of an open offer to work with a guy in Los Angeles who does big band and orchestra arrangements who was at least an acquaintance to Les Baxter before he passed away.
With *NSYNC, we shopped our deal for a year in America, sang a capella in everybody's office, then moved to Germany for almost two years and became popular there. A guy representing a rock band came to our show in Budapest, saw 60,000 people get excited for a band from America that nobody in America knew, and told someone at RCA.
My favourite series of all time has been 'Band of Brothers.' That was amazing; I've watched that so many times.
I love what I do, somehow I have been able to play in a band for my entire life and that is all I ever wanted to do. I love that I get to do that.
King Crimson were the only really famous band I'd been in.
