Edie Brickell Quotes

For me, songwriting starts with a melody. When a musician plays a chord progression, either the words and vocal melody come to me, or they don't. That's how I determine who to write with. It works, or it doesn't.

The wonderful thing about rock music is even if you hate the other person, sometimes you need him more, you know. In other words if he's the guy that made that sound, he's the guy that made that sound, and without that guy making that sound, you don't have a band, you know.

We really try to make sure that the band writes the songs, not just one person.

I'm definitely responsible for coming in with some basic chord changes, or ideas. Everybody in the band looks to me to come up with the basic seed, so it's not very productive to come in with nothing.

It's very hard to write a song alone. It's only by jamming that you can get a song together.

When you have four guys in a room writing songs, it different. It's great - that's what makes a band a band. Audioslave was great.

When I'm in the studio with a writer, I don't mind for them to take the lead and show me something new.

When I go in the studio with Post, I have a really good idea of what he's going to gravitate to, what we can work with.

Me and Tory Lanez got good chemistry together. We could make a song so easy, but we always like to figure out what we're really doing. We can make a good song, but it gotta make sense.

In our band, every member has input, but me and Steve do the majority of the writing. We start the songs, the rest of the band help us finish it.

If you start off writing an album with a band, the reality is that you're constantly in each other's company, so it's really important that you get on with each other.

We always feel there are 3 parts to the song. The most important part is the reason it should exist. Our process usually consists of me sitting at the piano & Bob hovering over it. We throw ideas out...I start to play something...he'll hum something to make it better. He'll throw a line to me, I'll twist it to make it better and we scramble around like that for sometimes hours and days, 'til we both agree we've got something to show! That's how it works!

I do like writing songs in a band. When it's rock, it's such a different kind of dynamic, obviously.

Freddie was very much able to ride the neutral wave. We all respected his views because he was such a great songwriter. It was his idea that we share all the credits. It was decided all the songs would be attributed equally to Queen. That immediately got rid of the arguments. That was a fantastic, democratic notion.

I think my best songs come from me sitting at a piano, bashing my head against a brick wall for hours and hours on end to get one good melody.

Obviously, writing together is very intimate because it's sort of acting where you need to get to a really deep place to get the most emotional song.

When I'm writing with Tony Iommi, for example, still it's very easy. We go in, and I know exactly what his style is. It's very distinctive, and you know exactly what he's looking for, and we know exactly where we're going from the first chord.

What people fail to realize is that any album we did, really, 90 percent of it reflected the songs people brought in. If someone had brought in two great rock songs for 'Cornerstone'... they would have been on that record.

Our album stuff, we bring it to our producer to help us finesse. But anything that's been on YouTube and a lot of the stuff that's been on the album, too, it started from us just sitting around in a circle and jamming it and finding where the parts fit.

All the best bands have to have more than just one strong songwriter.

Change is good, but in the middle of it, it can be very sad.

It's not easy to adapt to losing a lot.

When we arrive at the studio, we put the kettle on, have a cup of tea, say, 'How's the family? You still got that old car? Is that dog still alive?' and then we start jamming. That's how the songs get written.

Being a three piece, maybe it's easier. You only have two other guys, musically, and everything else to contend with and work with.

Because I write the music, I write the lyrics, I write the vocal melody lines - I write everything. Just because I let somebody sing something doesn't mean they're more important than the bass player or the keyboard player or the drummer.