It's hard to imagine the whole punk movement without The Velvet Underground. I toured with them when they did their reunion tour, and no one sounds like that; they are a very unique-sounding band.
I've gotta be the only father begging his son to leave a six-figure job to go play in a rock n' roll band!
We're a working-people's band, and we love America and what she stands for. Also, we love doing shows, whether it's a huge amphitheater or a corn dog fest. We don't care.
My first band was an Argentinian folk group when I was 10. When I was 12 I had my electric guitar, and by the time I was 13, the Beatles came into the scene, and that was over. So I have a mixture of all these traditions, and I think that's who I am, a mixture of everything.
Like when I'm singing live I can't hear myself. I'm just listening to the rest of the band. To listen to my voice, it doesn't even feel like it's me.
When you're in a band, you spend most of your time in a van. Like, there were four of us, we toured all the time, and you're stuck looking at three other people for a month straight. And all of those times, we all just liked making fun of people, doing impressions of people, coming up with songs.
My mother did play classical piano, not that well. And actually, my father sang with the big bands - he sang with Bob Crosby's band - but he had to give up show business when his father died. He had to come back to Montgomery and take over the furniture store.
I played the drums, and I was in a band called Funkasaurus Rex in Toronto. When I left for school, it became hard to play as frequently.
I just happened to wind up in a metal band when I was 15.
All I ever wanted to do was be in a band.
My son, Walker, has a band called The Dust Busters. You know, he plays banjo, fiddle, guitar, and mandolin, so a lot of my interest in that kind of music comes from him constantly listening to this stuff. He's taught me the history of it. It's remarkable how these young kids are now turned on to more traditional old-time music.
It's a farmers market. You can get whatever - peaches, a sandwich. There might be a little band there. I'd sit in with the band. Yeah, that's what I would do. Sit in with the band at the farmers market. Sing a couple of songs, eat a peach, and hug people.
I look like that in the morning: my hair's all greasy - it's not, 'Hey, look at the babe of the band!' I hate that kind of thing, the way women are always pushed forward as beauties... it's very easy: you can make the ugliest pig look lovely in a photograph.
The image of the band has always been something that's evolved or changed with every record cycle that we've done. I think, in a lot of respects, that's because we were so interested in having a visual representation for the music that we were making.
I think the idea of opening up for a massive band is always better than actually doing it, and having your name on the ticket means more than the actual set.
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 play 'Rock Band' with my friends' kids, and they completely beat me senseless with it. I feel like I'm holding them back. I try to play the drums, and I just can't play the drums. I think I need to work on my skills.
I did everything in high school - I played tennis, I played basketball, I was in chorus, I was in the band, I even did the mascot senior year... I went to the football games, and at half-time I went across the field, met all the cheerleaders and got their numbers! The same year, I won prom king!
I was never somebody who grew up going, 'I really want to be a singer in a band,' and I never had any ambition toward anything, really.
If I went crazy and tried to make pop music, my band wouldn't record it! I love them too much to do that.
I'm a very competitive person, and I always competed with myself. Every year, I'd take six weeks with my band, crew and choreographer to put a new show together. We'd spend eight hours per day, seven days per week putting a show together to beat the last year's show.
People find it confusing I'm in a band, even though music was my main thing before acting.
How does a band like System of a Down get big?
I don't feel like a live set even seems super real for an electronic act like me. It's not really that entertaining. I've seen a lot of my favourite acts take it to a new level with a live band and stuff, which is amazing, but for me, a live set would be boring to watch.
Honestly, being in a band with two guys has prepared me so much for when it's time for me to get married!
I think the Beatles is one band that, if I'm working on a song arrangement or if I have some idea for a song, and there's a little bit of a Beatles quality to it, I never avoid that. I always will steer into it.
I didn't sleep much in the summer of '98. Was getting ready to move to New York City. Start a band. That was a madman's summer. A summer of change.
The Beatles were basically a vocal band.
I was into all kinds of music as a teen - country music, because my dad was in a band that played country, and whatever my sister and brother were into.
And the two planes that were taking the band and crew that we had taken out to San Diego were flying out after the show. And so I was never supposed to be on that plane.
It was never fun being in the Ramones, which is the saddest thing of all, cause it shoulda been fun. It was probably fun when we played Performance Studio, and maybe some of the early gigs at CBGB's. But the Ramones were the type of group that had a bizarre mindset. Being in the band was so cut off from reality.
If Nirvana had remained a small, underground punk rock band, Kurt Cobain would still be alive. And he'd probably be living in Seattle, getting kind of fat and balding, be relatively happy and producing records for other people.
Sleater-Kinney is a band that we hold close to our hearts as well; it's not something that we're cynical or jaded about. We only feel gratefulness and appreciation for other people's enthusiasm about it. We would never be annoyed by that.
If you're making a film about a band or a songwriter or whomever, there's a publisher, there's a record label, and there are people who are vested interests in that film. But with back-up singers, because they did stuff for everybody, there's no one party that has any vested interest in seeing the story told.
I was 19 when I wrote 'Dreams,' and that would have been when it started to happen. The band got signed, and I was probably beginning to see different things besides my small town of Ballybricken.
'Some Kind Of Monster' is such a nightmare for any musician to watch because you're watching a band be honest to each other. Not a good idea, man!
