Jason Newsted Quotes

When I was 19, I joined a rock band, and that's when I began to say, 'Okay, this is something that I could take seriously.' When I came to Minneapolis, it just refined everything.

We started the band when I was about 19 or 20. At that age, it would have been kind of hard to imagine a lot of the stuff that I've written. We were playing garage rock. I wanted to dash out three chords and scream. But if you do that for 20 years, what's the point?

I love music - really a lot. That's why I do it. But mine just never makes it, to me. There's always something wrong with it, something I want to change. But I like that, because at least it keeps me looking, trying to find ways I can improve, which obviously are a lot.

When I started to make music I wasn't as serious at first.

I was playing in bands before high school even. My first band I was in at 14. And we were playing just Beatles.

I wish I'd gone to music school or just started playing in bands sooner.

I am pretty embroiled in moving on and moving forward with music.

Every time I'm home, it's like a vacation, but I've been playing in bands since I was 11. I guess our goals were always small goals. It started off my goal was just to be in a band. Then it was to have a drummer that would show up.

Boredom or being sick of what you've done before is a big part of being in a band.

I was playing in other rock bands. Any of those bands didn't last long.

I just want to keep playing music and keep recording. I feel like my best days are ahead.

I've always been in music. I started out in music, and I will continue to do music.

I'd fired anyone who was involved with Creed. I didn't want anything to do with the music business. The entire press and industry hated me, so what was the point?

I'll be making music 'til the day I die. I've done all kinds of stuff, and more is coming.

I'd forgotten what it was like to play music and have it be fun so I decided to stop. I wasn't even sure if I was going to make a new record, I was just kinda quitting.

When you start playing music when you're quite young, it's easy to stay young. And then you're touring, and you see people who've been on the road for 10 or 15 years and they just haven't grown up at all.

I think it was 37 years that I did music.

Now I'm fortunate to have a good band in CA, and play many solo gigs as well. My point is that I stopped playing in bands and played solo for four years, to get back into the groove and pulse of writing and singing and who I am on stage.

I started bands at a pretty young age and played with my friends back in Detroit. I've always known that I wanted to do this. It was all I was ever interested in doing. I never had, outside of music, any extracurricular activities that I took part in.

I did a lot of writing for a lot of different kinds of bands that I was in and out of during those five years and that left me with a little body of songs that I liked better when I played alone, so I ended up going out solo and very soon made my first album.

Playing music is a lifetime's work. And if you want to carry on with it, you have to try to better yourself. You have to see where the music can take you.

I feel like fifteen years with Fleetwood Mac was like working on my thesis, doing research for some kind of paper.

I did country way back when I was, like, 13-14 years old, and then I kind of fell into the pop genre.

One of the biggest misconceptions was, after I left Dream Theater, I went off and did, like, five different bands and side projects. Everyone was like, 'We thought you wanted a break.' And it was like, well, I didn't want a break from making music; I just needed a break from the Dream Theater camp.

I mean, I wasn't fortunate enough to have ever experienced starting out with a band and sticking with them, so that would be interesting to me. People whose bands start out like that, when they break up it's always terrible.