Quotes About Bands

#1. Bands have always written songs against what they see as wrong. Ronald Reagan really made for a lot of songs.

Henry Rollins

#2. They sounded really professional because they had two Vox AC 30 amplifiers. I also had an AC 30, so when you looked at it, three AC 30s, three Fenders - bloody hell, it must be a great band!

Tony Iommi

#3. I think a lot of bands go on way past the point where they're relevant. Some of them keep doing it because they're making millions of dollars. Or people are afraid - they don't know what else to do. It's scary to get out of a relationship of any kind.

Dean Wareham

#4. The nice thing about working for a label like Domino is that there's no pressure: They've got a roster of 40 active bands, and they can bang out an album or single in a week, so it's not the end of the world to not have a Max Tundra album in 2005.

Max Tundra

#5. I think I skipped a lot of music, like when I was 17 or 18. I didn't know about a lot of new bands because I was so immersed in older music.

Michael Kiwanuka

#6. I think we choose gear by the way that it looks. We choose lots of things by the way that it looks. I don't like bands that look like roadies. I don't like when I can't tell who's the guitar tech and who's the guitar player.

Alison Mosshart

#7. A big problem for me was opening for Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park, two bands that wouldn't exist if it weren't for me, straight up!

Chino Moreno

#8. When you look at bands like Take That, who have come back bigger than ever, you can see there will always be a market for good pop bands.

Shane Filan

#9. Contemporary bands often will do tour-only releases pressed and sold only in Australia. Crikey!

Henry Rollins

#10. All bands eventually break up because of one or more of the four P's: power, property, prestiege, pussy.

Dave Mustaine

#11. I love doing stuff with Todd Barry and Jon Benjamin. We give the stage to good bands and funny people.

David Cross

#12. States are far less violent than traditional bands and tribes. Modern Western countries, even in their most war-torn centuries, suffered no more than around a quarter of the average death rate of nonstate societies, and less than a tenth of that for the most violent one.

Steven Pinker

#13. Most people get into bands for three very simple rock and roll reasons: to get laid, to get fame, and to get rich.

Bob Geldof

#14. Every time I'm home, it's like a vacation, but I've been playing in bands since I was 11. I guess our goals were always small goals. It started off my goal was just to be in a band. Then it was to have a drummer that would show up.

Brittany Howard

#15. A more important reason is that the bands will intuitively trust someone they think is a peer, and who speaks fondly of the same formative rock and roll experiences.

Steve Albini

#16. Of course, no lyrics are ever unintentional, but I think bands like Wolf Parade and the Arcade Fire have a tendency to touch on big themes without really following through on them or tying them in to a particular logic.

Dan Bejar

#17. I get a lot from great '90s artists like Juliana Hatfield, The Pixies, and bands like That Dog and The Breeders.

Margaret Cho

#18. The bands that have been the most important to me, and the records that have been the most important to me as a fan, have been records that surprised me for one reason or another.

Steve Albini

#19. Well ... I had braces and I had to wear headgear! I loved my braces, actually. For me, they were like a piece of jewelry! Instead of the silver or pewter I had gold braces. It was so much fun, I loved them. I got to change the colors and stuff and I had the rubber bands.

Jordin Sparks

#20. I've definitely seen bands before they made money kind of change their thing on the next tour, and I prefer it when it's a little more raw.

Bruno Mars

#21. Now I'm having the time of my life being on the road with one of the world's all-time great big bands, and performing with symphonies. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Doc Severinsen

#22. I didn't try out for bands when I was younger. I got into guitars intensely a couple of years into playing so much by the time I was graduating high school I was accepted into Berklee College of Music.

John Petrucci

#23. Then one day in school, I turned round to the others and said, 'Dude, what if we started a band like All Time Low?

5 Seconds Of Summer

#24. As far as One Direction goes, and Mindless Behavior and all the other bands, I'm all for it, and if there's ever an opportunity to work with them, that'd be great.

Nick Jonas

#25. The human collective knows far more today than did the ancient bands. But at the individual level, ancient foragers were the most knowledgeable and skilful people in history.

Yuval Noah Harari

#26. The band would play on the night off for the local hotel bands and we'd back all the different acts. So I'd been advised by good friends of mine to come back to Hawaii. Oh, I loved Honolulu, playing at a place right on the beach at Waikiki!

Martin Denny

#27. My first instrument was actually the trombone, but that didn't last long. Soon I was playing guitar in bands from the time I was 11 or 12.

Dave Grohl

#28. People make such a big deal about how people in bands look, especially if you're a girl.

Juliana Hatfield

#29. All of the punk-rock bands of the era would come in and play, and my job on Punk Rock Night was that I would go into the slam pit, and ... I was 24 or 25, and I'd slam dance in the pit.

William Forsythe

#30. There's a reason that all societies and cultures and small bands of humans engage in myth-making. Fundamentally, it is to help us understand ourselves.

Philipp Meyer

#31. Me personally, I side more with punk rock bands. I grew up with The Misfits, The Dead Boys, The Damned, Dropkick Murphys, and early AFI. That was the stuff that really got me into music. Song writing wise, bands like Alkaline Trio were very important to me for beginning to write songs.

Andy Biersack

#32. The world is full of bands and bullshit, and if I'm doing a stupid art project like rock 'n' roll then I want to spare my audience as much as possible.

Ariel Pink

#33. I love rock and roll. Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong decade because I love Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix and ... those are my bands.

Marisa Miller

#34. There are still some pieces that aren't being used, like the white-space bands between TV channels. With digital broadcasting, those buffers aren't needed anymore. The wireless telcos want to lease them, while the TV industry wants to maintain the status quo. Either decision would be a mistake.

Ram Shriram

#35. I do think that some bands seem to be dabbling in the rock-hip-hop world and are not necessarily serious about it.

Fred Durst

#36. The sudden and abrupt deletion of all individuals occupying the lower bands of the Tone Scale from the social order would result in an almost instant rise in the cultural tone and would interrupt the dwindling spiral into which any society may have entered.

L. Ron Hubbard

#37. My whole back's tattooed. I just wanted a twist. I was always in punk bands when I was little ... I think that's where the tie comes from.

Gary Allan

#38. The age of 18 seemed the right time to try something different in my life. Moving to the U.K. was a risk, and I was never confident that I could ever make a full-time living being a musician, but I had to try. Initially, I worked as a jazz musician in pubs or with bands.

Manfred Mann

#39. I will go through these style phases. I think it's confusing in some ways. People like bands to be really consistent.

Mary Timony

#40. I idolised bands like Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins, who wanted to reach as many people as they could.

Nate Ruess

#41. Influences come from everywhere. I don't really feel like I had too many influences for the first record because I grew up listening to music in church, and that was pretty much it. I didn't really grow up listening to AC/DC and all those bands.

Avril Lavigne

#42. In a world of bands called Limp Bizkit and Hoobastank, Electric Sheep rolls off the tongue like a Shakespearean love sonnet. Leave me alone.

Tom Morello

#43. I'll tell you what I hate - bands like My Chemical Romance.

Jamie Bell

#44. In postscript let's just say that I am very fortunate cause I've gotten to work with a lot of great bands!

Jim Diamond

#45. If the label presents them with a contract that the band don't want to sign, all the label has to do is wait. There are a hundred other bands willing to sign the exact same contract, so the label is in a position of strength.

Steve Albini

#46. I've read a lot of fiction from writers just starting out, and the dialogue is a little bit forced, or it's almost too teenager-y, or too slang-y or putting too much technology or trends in there. I try to stay pretty trend-neutral. I try not to mention too many current bands or current TV shows.

Sara Shepard

#47. And yet, I seemed to feel my eyes bound, too, with bands of silk. And at my throat there was a velvet collar.

Sarah Waters

#48. Pink Floyd are one of a handful of bands I've listened to a lot and whose concerts I've been to. I love the experience. I don't dance; I just jig up and down like everybody else.

Tom Stoppard

#49. Bands that say they don't care about how their records sell are liars.

Brandon Flowers

#50. You have to go away to come back. That's just normal. That's with bands, actors, comedians, everything.

Pauly Shore

#51. If what you want to do is make artwork for bands, you have to love doing it because there is almost no money in it. In order to start doing it, you just have to put yourself out there, work for bands you love and for as little as possible to start, if not free, that's what I did for years.

John Dyer Baizley

#52. Enuff Z'nuff is one of the most underrated bands in the world!

Steven Van Zandt

#53. I think now, more than anytime I can remember, bands are sounding pretty similar whether they're English or American, from Manchester or London ... or Leeds or Welsh or Irish.

Graham Coxon

#54. I was in bands, but they were punk bands, and you plug in the guitars, you turn them up really loud, you've got four or five other people on stage with you, you've got some protection from when they throw lighters. You can always hide behind the lead singer or the bass player.

Oscar Isaac

#55. Wes Craven's 'Shocker' is one of my favorite soundtracks. I don't know where that movie stands in the critical eye of cinema, but it was a really fun movie because of all the bands that were part of it.

Adam Green

#56. It's not very often that I like new bands.

Natalie Imbruglia

#57. I want to get away from the social vampires in Tucson. The people who have no lives of their own and meet me and know who I am and feel entitled to say negative things. I have good friends here, especially in the bands. But a lot of it is just like high school.

Neko Case

#58. Neanderthals usually hunted alone or in small groups. Sapiens, on the other hand, developed techniques that relied on cooperation between many dozens of individuals, and perhaps even between different bands.

Yuval Noah Harari

#59. Yeah, I've played a lot of instruments, and I played in a lot of bands growing up, and I've even had to play music in a lot of films that I've done.

Alessandro Nivola

#60. Bribes and boy bands. That's all you need to be a babysitter.

Mindy Kaling

#61. I think most bands probably peak on their first album. We peaked on our third album. On the first album, I feel like I wish the production was a little better. I'll always hear a song I don't like. I look for what I could have done to make it better. It's always difficult for me to listen.

Johnny Ramone

#62. Why is there always one bloke in these boy bands who looks like he came to fix the boiler and somehow got bullied into joining the group?

John Connolly

#63. Certain punk bands were influential because I thought, If they can do that then I can .Hanging around those bands was how I started my first band - In Praise of Lemmings.

Boy George

#64. Frank's bands could play the hardest stuff and make it seem like no big deal.

Dweezil Zappa

#65. Write your own music and write frequently. Go to as many live shows as you can as well (of bands you enjoy of course). You can learn a lot watching other performers.

Dia Frampton

#66. Lightning Bolt and Hella are two bands I listen to, and there's a lot of finger tapping going on there.

Marnie Stern

#67. I can't wait to start something up myself that is actually about giving unsigned bands the exposure they deserve, especially when they travel so far to play the smallest gig they've ever played in their lives.

Dan Hawkins

#68. It's the most dangerous world for bands nowadays because everybody's branding and trying to steal your vibe as soon as you do anything that anyone cares about. It's very weird.

Alex Scally

#69. Metallica is going to be one of those bands you look back on in the year 2008, that people will still listen to the way I still listen to Zeppelin and Sabbath albums.

Jason Newsted

#70. I always freak out when people ask me about my favorite bands or my five favorite records, I just can never do that because it goes through different waves and sometimes you want to listen to something and at other times you want to listen to something else so I don't know.

John Bush

#71. I can play the trumpet. Before I became an actor, I wanted to be the next Louis Armstrong. I started young and got to grade seven. When I turned 13, everyone started whipping out guitars, looking cool and joining rock bands, so I stopped playing.

Douglas Booth

#72. Our influences are who we are. It's rare that anything is an absolutely pure vision; even Daniel Johnston sounds like the Beatles. And that's the problem with the bands I'm always asked about, the ones derivative of the early Seattle sound. They don't dilute their influences enough.

Eddie Vedder

#73. Prog didn't really go away. Just took a catnap in the late Seventies. A new generation of fans discovered it, and a whole new array of bands and solo artists took it on into the new millennium.

Ian Anderson

#74. Well, I don't care for Paul Ryan's sound or his lyrics. He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage.

Tom Morello

#75. One was to sting me," he thought, "I should swell up as big again as I am!" They were bigger than hornets. The drones were bigger than your thumb, a good deal, and the bands of yellow on their deep black bodies shone like fiery gold.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#76. James, that's a bad situation. I'm not saying it's not repairable, but it's pretty far. When you go from being in one of the best bands in the world to some cover band ... as far as I'm concerned, he was playing down at the pub.

Billy Corgan

#77. The south is very focused on family ... the musical heritage of Muscle Shoals especially and the bands from the region.

Jason Isbell

#78. There is nothing in art, in philosophy, or in politics to match the fervor of mutual cooperation among discordant bands of fanatics.

Alan Dean Foster

#79. My theory on Manchester and why it produces the bands it
does is that because the world is willing to listen to
them, it gives the kids a confidence and and a belief that
... what has happened before might happen again. It's something
to aim for.

Jimi Goodwin

#80. There are a lot of bands that have a huge appeal, but I don't understand why. Guns n' Roses. U2. But you know, that's just my thing. Music is pretty personal.

Ric Ocasek

#81. My mother told me when I was a toddler and in the crib that they would have music playing, and the thing when I lit up was boogie-woogie or something out of the Louie Jordan period of sometimes big bands, and then all kinds of things.

Robbie Robertson

#82. It might sound chauvinistic, but there is a sad reality in rock music: Bands who depend on support from females inevitably crash and burn.

Chuck Klosterman

#83. I think some of the musicians are more like punk rock musicians. It's like an art as opposed to being a musician. It's definitely more radical psychedelic bands, more than anything.

Wayne Coyne

#84. There are a lot of bands using self-abuse as a marketing gimmick.

Bruce Dickinson

#85. I liked anything that was a little bit weird, a little bit different. I always went for the psychotic, weird, 'dingey' bands.

Kurt Cobain

#86. Finn regarded pesky little things like wedding bands, engagement rings, and jealous, hulking menfolk more as amusing challenges than immovable obstacles that could be hazardous to his health.

Jennifer Estep

#87. There are bands, like R.E.M., who want to have 17 records, and some are terrible and some are great. I don't know if people think like that anymore. Things are more atomized now.

Travis Morrison

#88. As many bands as you heard [in New Orleans], that's how many bands you heard playing right. I thought I was in Heaven playing second trumpet in the Tuxedo Brass Band
and they had some funeral marches that would just touch your heart, they were so beautiful.

Louis Armstrong

#89. I'm disappointed by bands left and right, every day.

Henry Rollins

#90. We're in this band, the Foo Fighters, making music for the love of music. We all came from bands that had disbanded, and we were drawn to each other because we missed playing.

Dave Grohl

#91. I'm a bass player from way back and Paul is a guitar player and we've been in many bands.

Adam Jones

#92. Most bands don't work out. A small unit democracy is very, very difficult.

Bruce Springsteen

#93. There's the tradition in jazz of having the Battle of the Bands, and you do not want to get your head cut when you're playing.

Wynton Marsalis

#94. My dad, who plays guitar and piano and was in cover bands, along with my older brother, Matt, taught me guitar and stuff. I started writing acoustic songs and playing by myself in 7th grade.

Conor Oberst

#95. I don't like new bands. I don't want to be one of those pathetic old men in their forties who knows exactly what 18-year-olds are into.

Steve Coogan

#96. He's a million rubber bands in his resilience.

Alan K. Simpson

#97. I burst the tyrant bands, which held my sex in awe.

Deborah Sampson

#98. Back in the days, the groups and the bands that we listened to were like Earth, Wind and Fire, Santana and Grateful Dead. We don't have a lot of those bands anymore.

Sheila E.

#99. I think there was a brief period where Norwegian bands were evolving and that was an interesting time where it seemed like a band like Darkthrone was stuck in the midst of a lot of change and seemed a bit redundant.

Mat McNerney

#100. I know that there are a lot of sort of silly things that one thinks as a music listener about bands. I am a fan of many bands.

James Mercer