Everybody gets to a stage when it's time to move on. I was bored, and the band wasn't going anywhere, so I left. I did a couple of shows on Broadway and some other things. I was busy. I just wasn't making records.
In a way, I pattern myself after all the bands I used to like as a kid. Every time they put out LPs, they had a whole new look and a new sound.
Master of Ceremonies: In here, life is beautiful. The girls are beautiful. Even the orchestra is beautiful! [Curtains pull back to reveal an all-girl band]
Homer Stokes: This band of miscreants, this very evening, interfered with a lynch mob in the performance of its duty.
I would urge all bands that say they only care about credibility and don't care about money to send Gene Simmons every dollar that they don't want. I'd be happy to take it off them.
The Misfits pretty much funds the Misfits. It used to cost me money to be in the band. I think we got paid the last gig we ever did. After that, we had to work to support our families.
I pretty much ignored politics all through my 20's and 30's... I had other things on my mind... the band, finding a meaningful relationship, getting enough money to eat and pay the rent.
Knowing so many people like myself who are singers and in traveling bands, the people you're in a relationship with feel slighted because they feel you're giving all your energy to your fans, and there's a lot of truth to that.
It's a very complex scenario, and certainly Dave was, and is, not the only person in Pearl Jam with personality flaws. Everybody in this band exhibits some form of neurotic behavior. And we couldn't find a balance, a mutual respect for each other.
I like to follow my favorite team and talk sports with my band or fans. You won't believe how many musicians are sports fans. We have so much time on tour that we need these outlets for relaxation.
I don't think success has changed us as people at all. We are the same lunatics that we were when this band first got going. We never see ourselves as being on a higher level than our fans.
The weapons were conceived and created by a small band of physicists and chemists; they remain a cataclysmic threat to the whole of human society and the natural environment.
Bonnaroo has kind of become the granddaddy of all American festivals. The thing I love about it most is that it wasn't born out of picking the top ten bands off the Billboard chart and creating a festival around it.
I'd always wanted to work in the studio and experiment with sounds. Things that I'm really influenced by and that I love are like The Beatles and Radiohead, and all those records by bands whose music is really involved.
One day I would love to do rock a gig on the moon - how rad would that be? Isn't Richard Branson flying planes to outer space? Motley Crue could be the first band to play on the moon.
I think my ultimate fashion icon would have to be Gwen Stefani. I love her persona; I love what she embodies and represents. I love the fact that she was a girl fronting a band of boys in No Doubt.
I've never got on with the British press because they've always given me such a hard time. Once they build a band up they just want to do people down. They shouldn't concentrate on the colour of someone's shirt they should listen to the music.
I think that's given inspiration to other musicians. I know, particularly through the 90s, a lot of bands would cite Rush as an influence. I don't think it was so much our music, but more the way we really stuck to our guns.
I couldn't imagine what it's like to be a journalist talking about music. You're left with empty descriptions; you probably have to make up a sort of weird cocktail of band influences and references to other music to get your point across.
I've always loved music videos - I used to make my own for bands like Pearl Jam. My favorite directors are Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, and Patrick Daughters.
That's what so sad about a lot of modern music, in my opinion, so many young bands never stay around long enough to fulfill their ultimate promise. They only get halfway there or a quarter of the way there.
