'The Unity Band' project has been life-changing for me. I have led many groups of talented musicians, but this is unlike anything else.
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.
People relate to the spirit of the band, which is to live your way and succeed on your own terms. There's no hypocrisy in being successful and still railing against conformity.
Queen and Bon Jovi, Aerosmith and Guns N' Roses - I had a huge rock-band mania. I play a little bit of drums.
Ultimately, people do want to buy merch and tickets to support their favorite bands, but they don't want to feel like it's the only thing going on.
I wanted to be as far away from everybody as I could be. I found it difficult to be close to anybody, not just the guys in the band.
You have to remember the band played from 1960 to 1965, every night. You get into a rut playing nightclubs every night, and you didn't want to run it into the ground.
The Doors were successful. It was Jim Morrison as the centre and the figure and the spokesman, the figurehead, but we were all into the same thing. That's why we were a band.
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.
I played trumpet in school once because I joined band because a cute boy played trumpet too. And I was really bad at trumpet.
At the end of the day, though, the band members have to be strong. It's down to the individuals in the unit. Listen to me, I'm talking like I'm in the army and this is my squadron.
Almost every band has somebody who's the main songwriter and who has a vision, a very clear idea of how a song should be.
Amy: Pond and her boys . . . my poncho boys. If we're going to die, let's die looking like a peruvian folk band.
In an era when most bands were about nothing, the Manics were about everything: an eloquent scream, a j'accuse to the entire moribund millennium.
With 'Elect the Dead,' I learned how to make a rock record without a rock band and make the rock record I've always wanted to make.
The band broke up because I couldn't bear Rotten anymore because he was an embarrassment with his silly hats and his, like, shabby, dirty, nasty looking appearance.
I used to get so jealous if my wife liked another band more than my own. Come to think of it, I still do.
My brother and I moved out to Hollywood initially to be a band, and where we lived, there was crime all over with my brother and I being the victims sometimes.
When I was in college in Philly, there was a lot of post-punks... hardcore... like, rock. Sixties, retro, proto-Strokes kind of bands.
It's hard for bands to stick it out because people grow up, and it never really pays off. If you're looking for some sort of payoff, it's not gonna happen.
Around '75 when the recession hit, club owners started going to disco because it was cheaper for them to just buy a sound system than it was to hire a band.
