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.
I think people who just know me from my band think I don't like pop music. The truth is I love pop music.
I've always been in love with that Delta-flavored music... the music that came from Mississippi and Memphis and, especially, New Orleans. When I was 14, I was in a wanna-be New Orleans band in Toronto.
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.
Men are going to go out on the road and they're going to find other women. So if you really want to save yourself a whole lot of heartache, do not fall in love with somebody in a band. Just don't.
I was in a band in high school and college and I always had a love for music, but I didn't go to a conservatory or anything like that. I was fairly self-taught.
I'd say we do reach somewhat of a younger audience, but I think for the most part that younger audience is picking our music up from a brother or sister or even parent, who is turning them onto the band.
The repercussions of what you put out and what people gravitate to in your music never registered at all. I never had that thing that maybe other bands have - a specific idea of what they are and what their sound is.
When you're playing music, say for instance, you're playing a part of the band and you're looking at your music, your horn is down into the stand. This way, it's up and it goes right on out to the audience, you know?
I was a schooled musician. When I made 'Blue Velvet', I told everyone what to do. I was an arranger. I learned music in school I told the band to play this. I told the guitar to do that.
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.
I would do a Byrds tour or a Byrds record in a minute. I miss that band now. I've tried to convince Roger over and over to do it, but he's not interested. Music isn't something you can legislate into being.
I started listening to and playing other music in the '90s. It was after hearing other bands, like Bad Religion, cover Ramones songs that I started to like our songs again.
The less people that are on the stage, there's more drama. You start living the music with each individual. When you see a band with ten people on stage, just a huge ensemble, you don't know who's doing what.
I go into military communities and do fundraisers and that kind of thing with the band, because I know that the music can help do a lot of things. It can bring communities together, it can raise awareness... and it entertains.
Trying to write music, be in a band and keep it all happening is one of the hardest, morale-destroying, heartbreaking things you will ever try to do - and that's when it's going well.
It's much easier to work on other people's music and play in other people's bands as a guitar player instead of being the main songwriter and singer. That's a really big job to do that.
Seeing our VH-1 Behind the Music shows just how dysfunctional some of the moments of the band were but this new line-up has put the fun back in dysfunction.
Music rhythms are mathematical patterns. When you hear a song and your body starts moving with it, your body is doing math. The kids in their parents' garage practicing to be a band may not realize it, but they're also practicing math.
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.
The band projects just took natural priority. I didn't really have a solo career, just wanted to share the music in another way and to learn more about writing, recording, etcetera.
