Mark E. Smith Quotes

Sometimes the problem is not the people in the band, but the people around the band.

When you get together in a group, it becomes like a family, with the different personalities and the politics that comes with being in a band. It's different than bringing something in by yourself.

People forget that keeping a band together is hard; man, it's really hard. All the cliches apply about living in each other's pockets; of it being a relationship, a marriage, a family.

You could say that Fleetwood Mac is a bit of a dysfunctional family, but we are a family.

Fleetwood Mac was one big lesson in adaptation for me. There were five very different personalities, and I suppose that made it great for a while.

Everyone wants the same thing in this band, so we definitely respect each other. I mean, all of us have had hit songs, so it's a band full of people who really know what they're talking about, so you have to respect that even when you think something you have might be great, and they go, 'Man, it's not as great as you think it is.'

I don't really get that, when groups tour together or even do anything together when they hate each other.

I had a chance to play with the best musicians that were coming through because I was pretty good myself or else they wouldn't have tolerated with me.

The Animals were their own worst enemy. The Animals were a band that couldn't live up to their name. I was the singer in the band and as long as I was enjoying myself I would keep on working with the band. But it got to be rather nasty once the big money showed up - things started to turn toxic.

Somebody asked my friend Bob Seger, Why do you think the Eagles broke up? He said, Hotel California.

You make one solo album, and some people swear you're about to leave the band or there are creative differences.

It's a really bad idea to be in a band and get involved with each other.

Sure, we've had our fair share of ups and downs, but I don't know if we've had more than any other rock band... we just have a way of getting ourselves into hot water.

I was in a band in Auckland, and I remember they all hated me. They had a big intervention. They said, basically, 'Gin, we think you suck.' I was miserable. I cried and cried. But looking back, that taught me about social skills and how to communicate with musicians.

The great thing about movies is that they're collaborative. And the worst thing is that they're collaborative.

But things can happen in a band, or any type of collaboration, that would not otherwise happen.

You want to mix acting styles correctly. People approach the work in different ways. You want to make sure no one wants to kill each other because the approach is different.

It's taken folk a while to come around, hasn't it? Even the boys in the band weren't too sure about the whole art thing. They just wanted me to concentrate on the music. But they respect it now.

If you look at the whole time I was in the band, I only did, like, three solo albums - two, really. 'Out Of The Cradle,' I had already left because we'd done 'Tango In The Night,' and it was sort of the logical extension of crazy in terms of everyone getting ready to hit the wall with their habits.

In most cases, I think most executive producers and studio executives really do their best to accommodate you. At least, that's been my experience in most cases.

I think that dating other musicians can be complicated at times. Especially when they think highly of themselves.

I don't know how people do this job collaboratively if they don't really get along. You're spending all day every day for months and years on end with somebody.

'The Haters' has some of the generalities of band experiences that I've had - the camaraderie, the grubbiness, the outsized collective ambitions and frequent painful collisions with reality - but very few of the specifics. I guess it was a way for me to take some of my experiences to their logical crazy extremes.

The hardest part, for me, is being in the band and knowing the way I want certain things to sound, but also having to listen to opinions, and very valid opinions, of my bandmates. So, sometimes, I'll have to have conversations with them as a producer and then conversations with them as a bandmate.

I don't have to rope in Armaan for every song just because he is my brother. There have been times when I have replaced him with another singer. We don't have a war over it at home.