I grew up listening to everything. And rock and roll has always been a big, big part of it - as big a part of what I do as any other type of music.
It was the early days of Rock 'n' Roll in this country. We were all struggling to learn music, it might be Country, Jazz, Classical, Blues or even Rock 'n' Roll.
But there are rock and roll fans all over this continent and all over the globe, really, and we're just set at marking the planet with Styx music until the day we die.
If you don't know the blues... there's no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music.
I came up playing in both punk rock bands and hip-hop bands, and I found a more universal way of reaching people, especially with music that has a message to it.
The problem for me, still today, is that I write purely with one dramatic structure and that is the rite of passage. I'm not really skilled in any other. Rock and roll itself can be described as music to accompany the rite of passage.
One of my problems is I'm not really sure if I slot into rock or not. I've always tried to combine world music, folk, jazz, blues and rock, and have done since Traffic.
That's the kind of musical freedom I like: jazz, rock, blues, anything. You adopt different attitudes when you play different music.
There's a great energy and drive that takes precedence in a lot of rock and pop. It's about making a strong visceral connection. That's something that I think great classical music can have, too.
I love rock and opera, and I love musical theater, and I don't want to lose any of that.
When rock came along the lyrics and melodies became less important and it bothered me to think that perhaps they might not regain the value they have to music - they are music.
I grew up listening to a lot of player-piano music in my house and a lot of old Tin Pan Alley songs and American standards. My dad listened to a lot of traditional Irish music and I grew up doing musical theater. So most of the music I was exposed to...
When I was a teenager, I really didn't like loud rock music. I listened to jazz and blues and folk music. I've always preferred acoustic music. And it was only, I suppose, by the time Jethro Tull was getting underway that we did let the music begin t...
There's always a spattering of people who see Hanson who were influenced by classic '60's and '70's rock and roll. In a lot of ways, we're sort of the anatomy of a '70's rock band if you examine what we do: white guys who grew up listening to soul mu...
Music was in the air when I was growing up. My siblings Katy, Dave and Phil were musical; my dad worked in inner-city New York where a musical revolution was taking place - folk music, rock n' roll, gospel music. My sister taught me to sing. My broth...
I call it treason against rock 'n' roll because rock is the antithesis of politics. Rock should never be in bed with politics. ... When I was a kid and my parents started talking about politics, I'd run to my room and put on the Rolling Stones as lou...
I tend to support and get behind issues instead of candidates, because of the whole 'Super Bowl' generalization of our world - You're on this side, I'm on that side; you're a Republican, I'm a Democrat; you're country music, I'm rock music.
And in an era where radio stations that are inclined to play Styx music are your classic rock stations and the stations that play current music look at us as dinosaurs - the only way we could reach people with our new music, generally, is to perform ...
I can't read music. That's not where I come from musically. I come strictly from feeling, and that feeling comes from rock & roll.
We love all kinds of music: We love pop music, we love rock music, we love R & B and country, and we just pull from all our influences. So I don't really take offense as long as people are coming out to the shows and buying the records and becoming f...
When you sit down and think about what rock 'n' roll music really is, then you have to change that question. Played up-tempo, you call it rock 'n' roll; at a regular tempo, you call it rhythm and blues.
