Joe Walsh Quotes

I wanted to play rock and roll when I started playing. Nobody at that time ever thought about songwriting. You sang songs, that's all. You sang other people's songs. That's all there were.

We play some of my stuff and we play some Beatle covers.

To me and my band, guitar riffs are what it's all about. We know that every time we jam on a great riff, we've got a fighting chance of writing a great song!

I compose my own stuff. I've been writing songs with words. I've been playing more on the keyboard because I can transpose it to sheet music on the computer.

I wrote the tunes and sang only nonsense words. Then came Moore and dressed them with the lyrics.

For me, the music dictates the melody. Give me a riff to sing over, you know?

I don't think I'd ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.

When I'm writing with John Leventhal, the music that he's written mostly comes first. And I'll write the lyrics and the melody.

When I write, I write the drum beat. Though sometimes I write on piano or guitar.

For 'Dynamite,' Max and Luke went to dinner and left me with a melody, and then I put it together.

For me, songwriting is really where it's at. I turn to use the guitar just to help me write the songs. That's it. As a result, my guitar playing suffers pretty horribly.

The music I wrote as a kid already was always instrumental. It was never based on lyrics.

If I improvise vocals at an early stage of the song, I just kind of listen to the roll, and then I kind of have a little vocal hook.

I usually write lyrics first, and then when I get home or close to any kind of instrument, I usually make a melody for those lyrics.

The only thing I don't write is the guitar solos, but even then I might suggest one or two things.

You don't write songs, really, when you're on tour.

With 'Under the Pressure,' I just found two chords I liked, and built it up, did like a ten-minute drum pattern.

I'm about a 20-handicapper with a guitar. I can only play three songs on my own album. I did the lyrics, not the music.

It's easy to get people to sing along to cover songs, but when it's your song, it's the coolest.

I used to just sit in the living room and make up songs on the keyboard.

I've never been known as a riff kind of artist.

I teach songwriting a lot, and I always tell my students, 'You gotta write the little songs sometimes to get to the next big song in the chute.' You gotta write 'em to get to it. You never know what's going to be a little song or a big song.

Sometimes we'd just play acoustic guitar and try out the parts and make a library. We'd use a double cassette player and make little edits.

Lately, I love creating ideas on my acoustic guitar. I sit in my living room for hours trying different chords.

I'll get a few words and then go back to the music and then back to words, and play them off each other - and then I'll bring the song to the band.