Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Parenting changes your life, it changes how you hear yourself in relationship to others - which is part of the reason that a bunch of people in the rock community are sick of the goodwill and positive energy and love between these 45-year-old musicians who they preferred when they were 25 and taking stabs at each other.
At 25, my idea of success may have been more vain, like, "I'll be good the day that there's $20 million in my account and I have this particular house and the wife and 2.5 kids." But at 40 - and I know it's kind of silly telling you guys this - but as long as my Metacritic rating stays above 80, that's all I care about.
They call it a reunion for a reason. It's called bringing the original members back to what it was. So there's a lot of these things that they call reunions that aren't really reunions. They've got one dude from the band floating around in them, you know. That's not a true reunion. With Pantera, it'll never be possible.
The evocative power of the drum can be compared to the Trinity. The drum's frame comes from the trunk of a tree, and that tree has a spirit. It is not dead wood. There is also spirit in the animal skin. If there wasn't, it would not produce sound. Those, plus the spirit of the person playing become an irresistible force.
I've had so many [life lessons], but the more I've walked through tough times, the stronger I've become. I truly believe anything is possible if you fully manifest it. I've been to the top and I believe I've been to the bottom as well. Respecting yourself is key - physically and mentally. It's OK to take care of yourself.
I think you have to sort of accept that nobody really knows where it`s going so there has to be a lot of impulsive kind of attitudes. So it`s like a train that`s moving and you don`t quite know where it`s going but you try to steer it in the best way you can realizing that it may go in different places that you had no idea.
White people couldn't do black music back in the day because they weren't funky or bad enough. They weren't from the ghettoes, but hip-hop and R&B changed all of that because white kids want to be down with it. They wanted to learn it so they studied the culture. It's kind of a cool thing because we shouldn't be so separate.
I'm very proud of my love for Whitney Houston. She really changed my life. She made my life a better life. She was so beautiful in her love for God, her love for her family and her love for music. She truly loved her music. She could do everything! She had flawless rhythm, flawless pitch, flawless feeling, and flawless beauty.
Hugh [Evans] called us. And obviously this has been on our radar for all the years it`s been going on. And each year obviously reaches more and more people, and it`s high profile. Hugh reached out to our manager just down the street. And we said we`re here [ on GLOBAL CITIZEN in the Central Park] to help and do whatever we can.
There are numerous different kinds of drum sounds - some are more ambient and roomy and this, that, and the other, the John Bonham kind of thing. Then there's kinda what I did with Pantera, which was much more attacky, and then with what I did for 'Blood For Blood' on the Hellyeah record is kind of a combination of all of that.
The relationship in Pantera and with Damageplan is the opposite of the traditional rhythm section. It's me and Dime, not the bass, locking in always. Dime's such a strong rhythm player that we just walk in, and we're good to go. We've been playing together forever, and when he goes somewhere, I instinctively know where he's going.
What Metallica always tries to do, as we go around and play a lot of the same cities, over and over again, year after year, is to give a different experience. We try to never play the same venues, or if we play indoors, we'll play outdoors, and all that type of stuff. It's always about just trying to do a different kind of experience.
I don't ever have any bass in my monitors at all; I instead like to lock in with the guitar. I know the bass player has got to be locked in with the drummer, but to me, metal music is about the guitar and drums locking in and operating like a machine together. I played with my brother forever, and we were magically locked in together.
The spirit of the drum is something that you feel but cannot put your hands on, It does something to you from the inside out . . . It hits people in so many different ways. But the feeling is one that is satisfying and joyful. It is a feeling that makes you say to yourself, ' I'm glad to be alive today! I'm glad to be part of this world!
One of the greatest learning experiences I had was hanging out with Maureen Tucker from the Velvet Underground. There's a woman who has no training and has a very simplistic and very tribal drumming style. I don't even know that she can even do a drum roll, but she's probably my favorite rock drummer because she plays every note perfect.
It is an indication of Chelski's warped finances that even successive titles can be regarded as failure. Spend unprecedented sums and only unprecedented success can be commensurate. Chelski won't get the credit they think they deserve because of the money they've spent. There's £300m worth of difference between a victory and an achievement.
Where does Terry live? Somewhere deep inside. So I just let that come out and try to make something out of it without worrying about techniques or rules or any of that stuff. Just do it, you know. As long as it doesn't burn or get deleted, you know, then somebody will find it someday and I will have left something that I think is beautiful.
Friends come back from their worship with a new sense of ordination, but not the ordination of human hands. Something has happened in the stillness that makes the heart more tender, more sensitive, more shocked by evil, more dedicated to ideals of life, and more eager to push back the skirts of darkness and to widen the area of light and love.
But still it's like I said, when you hop in a cab in Italy and the guy doesn't speak English, uhh, you know, you have to start pointin' at things. You learn how to deal with it. What I'm tryin' to say is that it's not as convenient as touring in the states or say somewhere like Australia or even England where they speak the same language fluently.
Femininity doesn't always relate to being a woman and masculinity doesn't always relate to being a man; it's a quality of being-ness. Women have to portray the quality of masculinity; society wants it to be like a man; not necessarily male, but like a man. If that makes sense...In nature itself, there's yin and yang, there's masculine and feminine.
When I joined, they were like "Woah, dude!", because I came right out of that type of playing. But obviously with P. Roach there's more groove. I like doing those slower big fills, but I also like injecting some of that punk rock urgency. But I definitely need to mix it up, because if I was playing all fast fills all the time, it just wouldn't work.
Jumping back into it was easy as apple pie, it was natural. Honestly, I'm not trying to be nostalgic and talk about the old days but I really believe wholeheartedly that the three of us, Woody Weatherman, Mike Dean & myself really learned how to play our instruments together and now that we are playing together again it can't be anything but natural.
Doing things the way you see it, going by your own heart and soul, that is pure artistic integrity. Whether the hair is six or sixty inches long, the eyes have make-up or not, the riffs are in 'E' or 'F' sharp, the amps are Marshall or not, all those things don't matter if you are doing it for the right reason, which to me means doing it for yourself!!
I think I probably learned something from almost every gig that I've done, not only because each occurred at a different phase of my development, but because each one had something different to offer. Ideally, you should be able to get something out of everything, positive or negative. And if it's negative, try to turn it into some kind of learning experience.
I feel like the downfall of any person is the second an artist starts celebrating their work themselves, that becomes problematic. And you know, I don't sit there, I don't bask in the awards I've won, you know, read my bank statements, I refuse. To me, that's how you start losing the hunger. So for me personally, I just don't celebrate it. I'm happy, right now.
You gotta understand also that teenage kids just don't have the experience and the studio technique. I mean, in those days it wasn't electronic like it is today, where you can hit a drum and, you know, the engineer does it all. In those days, everything was live and you had to have decent sounds, and through the years you get to weed out what's bad and what's good.
We've played with Black Flag, Bad Brains, Minor Threat, The Ramones. You name any punk band and we've probably played or toured with them all the way up to and including Soundgarden, who we've toured with three times now. We also toured with Metallica for a year. But yeah, Megadeth was the only one we were a little sketchy about because um, it was a little sketchy.
I don't think we really planned it ahead of time but rather oozed out of our pores. All three of the demonstrative themes of Corrosion of Conformity are on there. The Hardcore/Punk from the 80's, the late 80's/early 90's mathy metal and finally the more Pepper, swampy/doomy stuff. We love all three so that's what came out on the album and I think it came out magically.
When I was in eighth grade said sit in at a graduation party and I played 'Boys' by The Beatles and fifty people were standing around with their mouths open. And you kind of get the hint, well maybe I should do this because I'm not very good at sports, I'm not that popular, I'm not very smart, and I'm not very good looking, but when I played the drums, everybody liked it.
Woody Weatherman showed me two beats, the "do do dat, do do dat" rock beat and the "ooh at ooh at ooh at" punk beat and other than that I was pretty limited. I had just gotten a drum kit for Christmas, which I was stoked about so I was ready to go. Back then, the prerequisite for playing punk rock drums wasn't very high, it was really pretty generic as I'm sure you can imagine.
Inspiration is not inside of us. Inspiration comes from outside. It comes from our spiritual guides and from different energies that are in the universe. If we keep in touch with god and our spiritual guides, just knowing that they exist and they are there for us, gives us the strength to say well this is a bad phase but it's going to end and when it ends I'm going to do something good.
Because of the attitude of a few mental dinosaurs intent on exploiting our initial success, Brian's huge talent has never been fully appreciated in America and the potential of the group has been stifled.... If the Beatles had suffered this kind of misrepresentation, they would have never got past singing 'Please Please Me' and 'I WannaHold Your Hand' and leaping around in Beatle suits.
Back then, I was really into composing the entire solo, beginning to end. I wanted to have it at least 80 to 90 percent complete before going into the studio. I didn't improvise in the studio. I was young, and I didn't really have the development in my playing or the ability to show up with nothing and then put down 500 ideas. I can do that now because I'm so much more of a musician now.
It was absolutely killing me that I've spent the first 25 years of my life tryin' to avoid bullets. That was always the main concern. Don't go out late. Don't go to any shady neighborhoods. Don't hang in bars alone. Why? Because you wanna avoid bullets. So once I get to 35 then I was like "Woo, okay. Made it." And now there's a new warning. Now it's like strokes; I gotta watch my health.
In early historical civilization, lunar symbols wove together three major metaphorical concepts. The first is the idea of fertility. The moon controls the tides of both water and blood – the sacred fluids of the early religions. The second is the concept of periodic rebirth, symbolized by the moon’s monthly waning and renewal. The third is the notion of continually repeating cycles of change.
I really think kids should understand that music is like learning the alphabet. You put small letters together to make words, and then you use these words to create a story, but with music. And they really need to know how to mix and match those letters and how to come up with something that is really interesting, or speak in metaphors as poets do to show us something maybe we didn't think about.
When I was a kid, I felt like I could do anything and play anything. I just felt super-confident. And then, once I started to play music professionally, maybe it's from being from a small town, but you grow up and then you're suddenly a big fish in a small pond, and I realized that there were a billion other drummers out there that could play as good as you or better, and everybody wants that job.
The very first practice we [Woody Weatherman, Mike Dean & myself ] did it was like, "Oh ok, I get it." We were jamming on some crazy ass, out of the box, weird time signature riffs and I got it, whereas anyone else who was playing with them recently would have been like, "What? What are you doing?" So I think there's something unspoken between the three of us that makes us Corrosion of Conformity.
More than any other drummer, Ringo Starr changed my life. The impact and memory of that band on Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 will never leave me. I can still see Ringo in the back moving that beat with his whole body, his right hand swinging off his sock cymbal while his left hand pounds the snare. He was fantastic, but I think what got to me the most was his smile. I knew he was having the time of his life.
In comparison to the emotionally-charged axing of a striker, Ruud van Nistelrooy, who averaged 30 goals a season, even the sale of David Beckham for, in Real Madrid's opinion, "peanuts", and the never-explained departure of Jaap Stam appear to be the rational acts of a sage and far-sighted manger. To offload a player because he could not be reconciled with a role within the squad is a failing of management.
If you enjoy learning, if you enjoy the curiosity of music and what can be done with it, and stop looking at it as something you have to do because someone says this is what you have to do to be a professional, you know, learn it because you're curious about it and then I think you'll have a much better creative sense and enable this inner voice to come out. These things are not taught and are not encouraged.
I had been composing just for myself, and people would say I played so orchestrally, and wondered if I thought about having someone write a piece for me for an orchestra. And I thought, I don't want someone else to write that. You know I finally had made an overhead chart of my drums and what pitches the cymbals and toms were tuned to, and what have you. And I started to compose just with what I had for my solo drumming.
With all his greatness and accomplishments on the guitar, Dime will be missed more for his giving personality, charisma, caring for others, love and most of all his heart. Twice as big as the state of Texas. Dime gave it all every day to each and every one of us and our lives have forever been hollowed without him… Thanks to all of you for reaching out to us in this time of our immeasurable loss. Rest in peace brother Dime.
Half the stuff I've written was written when I was half asleep watching the David Letterman show when some boring actress was on talking about herself. I would just mute the TV, look over to the computer and start plugging in notes. Then the next morning you go "Wow, I like this". I'd almost forget what I did, and then it would inspire me to go on and do the next thing. That's what I do. Just kind of follow my own little thing.
You have to study composition to understand that things can be done backwards and forwards and upside down, inverted, but it's mainly just an inner valid intuitive thing. Where do you want to go? Ok this is busy, or this needs some space, or this is too much space so now I want to put more notes in there or something. It's all about contrast. High, low. Fast, slow, thick or thin or what have you. And it's the same with improvisation.
There were so many bands in New Orleans. But most of the musicians had day jobs, you know -- trades. They were bricklayers and carpenters and cigar makers and plasterers. Some had little businesses of their own -- coal and wood and vegetable stores. Some worked on the cotton exchange and some were porters. They had to work at other trades 'cause there were so many musicians, so many bands. It was the most musical town in the country.
Karl Agell sang for our Blind album which was our second best selling record. He's a great guy and as a matter of fact, before Mike, Woody and I really got going on touring on the old Animosity stuff, Karl & I did about a dozen shows performing the Blind album from start to finish. He's still a good friend of mine and is now in a band called Lead Foot that's more Rock and Roll but they're fantastic, kind of Thin Lizzy or MC5 sounding.
In a manner akin to the influence of Tiger Woods on the other side of the Atlantic, Thierry Henry has helped kick down a few of the remaining bigoted stereotypes. Through his undisputable class and dignity, Henry has made a deep-seated difference to race relations in this country. Racism will flounder whenever white children grow up with a black man as their hero. That so few comment on Henry's colour is a silent tribute to his impact.
We[ Papa Roach ]'re always trying to get bigger and bigger. It's weird because I wasn't around when they sold millions of records. Now it's just always about "OK what new people can we get to." We're trying to package up with younger bands like Bring Me the Horizon or Of Mice and Men. Those bands always get talked about, because their demographic is so young. But, actually we are seeing a lot of younger people at shows which is awesome.
Metallica lives in a little bubble. We just do our own thing. We're not part of any trends or waves or fads. We can just do our own thing, all the time. It's a great luxury. I don't think we were really appreciative of it until recently, and really understood that it is what keeps us alive. It's great to be able to have the freedom to run around and do all this crazy stuff, and at all cost, avoid making another record, just to piss our managers off.