Timothy B. Schmit Quotes

Ann and I were the main writers in Heart. We had the leadership role, and the guys in the band sometimes had a hard time with that.

With Dream Theater, every creative aspect of the group went through me. I oversaw it all from top to bottom.

I write the music, produce it and the band plays within the parameters that I set.

When we came into the studio I became more and more me, making the tracks and choosing the musicians, partly because a great deal of the time during Bridge, Artie wasn't there.

In Nine Inch Nails, I've been the guy calling the shots since inception. I'd gotten used to that.

My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative. I have never been a right-winger. It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems.

The new leader is a facilitator, not an order giver.

Frank was the BOSS and was not open to anything that was not from his head. There were no arguments about music because if you did, he would show you where the door was. Period.

Democracy can tie your hands in a rock 'n' roll band, you know? It can be a great thing, but if you've got a certain amount of vision and you write a lot of songs, it's sometimes better to have your own band and make your own decisions.

Many leaders are tempted to lead like a chess master, striving to control every move, when they should be leading like gardeners, creating and maintaining a viable ecosystem in which the organization operates.

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.

Paul forced the Beatles to work a lot harder than they would have otherwise, and he did the same thing with Wings.

I'm a band dictator.

It's not a 'sexy' position, being the producer. You have to be very bossy. You have to be very aggressive.

In our band, we had such an interesting democracy, and it worked really well.

It always offended me when I was in the studio and the engineer or the assumed producer for the session would start bossing the band around. That always seemed like a horrible insult to me.

It usually happens spur of the moment, like when I broke up My Chemical Romance, it was just that day that I decided it was time for them to be done. And people were very upset about it so I have to choose my next victims carefully.

I think, though, with that whole sense of integrity and a lot of things that have been going on, the shared leadership rather than the titular head.

Donald Trump runs the country like he ran "The Apprentice." The premise of "The Apprentice" is a crazy rich guy has his daughter and his son oversee celebrities doing tasks. And then they come back to him, and they tell him how they did. So in every episode he's like, how did - how'd Meatloaf do, Ivanka? And then she says, Meatloaf really did a great presentation. And then he makes some impulsive decision about who to fire based on not being there, not really even understanding anything.

It was always very important for us that we presented ourselves as a band, because it's a three-part writing process and it's a three-part decision making process, it's not two producer guys and a girl that sings the songs. It's startling how many people make that assumption.

I recorded a lot of songs that I knew I didn't like just because maybe part of me wanted to be nice, maybe part of me just wanted to be in the studio, but I've been learning that it's really important to do what you want to do. Even though I might not write all of it, I am still picking out the songs that I want to do. A lot of people who are writing for me are people I have worked with for a while so they know who I am and what I want. I have a lot of opinions and I have learned that it is absolutely okay to express them and to say, "No, I don't want this."

There's a big difference between a decisive manager and a tyrant.

[Ronald] Reagan seems to be a man of some basic convictions and on the other hand willing to let others do the ground homework, the detailed work.

When I give a minister an order, I leave it to him to find the means to carry it out.

A director is what a director wants to be. If you want to force something, you can fight to the death and maybe get fired, but it's your job to help push things along.