Rory Gallagher Quotes

That's the nice thing about being a live act. I can get the audience, but it's for the moment. It's like, 'Can I do it tonight?' And you can see when people like you. But on record - and with the pen - it's almost for all time. Really, a lot more thought has to go into it.

When I sit down to write a song, it's a kind of improvisation, but I formalize it a bit to get it into the studio, and when I step up to a microphone, I have a vague idea of what I'm about to do.

It's different playing in a studio than it is playing live, of course.

I'm very proud of my records, but my most natural creative tendencies have been in live performing. There's a beautiful element to recording and making records, but I've always felt a little shy with it.

In some of the greatest recordings ever made, the performance is a part of the recording. Dylan's 'Rainy Day Women No. 12 and 35' is all about the esthetic of that performance. You can hear the room.

Whenever I approach a record, I don't really have a science to it. I approach every record differently. First record was in a home studio. Second record was a live record. Third record was made while I was on tour. Fourth record was made over the course of, like, two years in David Kahn's basement.

There's a clip where he had someone miming me running around from keyboard to keyboard. Oh dear, I am sure a lot of people didn't know what he was going on about.

I'll have the music, and then I'll just turn the microphone on, press Play and Record and sing. And whatever comes out ends up being the melody.

I've actually always wanted to make something like an acoustic record.

I have always thought of myself as a performer first and way down the line as a recording artist.

I'm always on tour, so I'm always trying new tracks out live before they're released. That's more necessity than anything, because I don't get a proper chance to sit in a studio and work on tracks like other producers do.

After that initial success, every chance we got we'd hire that remote recording truck and just record stuff at the Whisky because it was so inexpensive.

My take is that acting is acting. A performance is a performance. With performance capture, if you don't get the performance on the day, you can't enhance the performance.

When we were making Speaking in Tongues and Remain in Light, we were jamming. From that we were taking the best bits and then recording and improvising on top of those.

I don't miss television. It's too much hurry up and sit around, wait till they do this and do that, and get the lighting just right. I'd much rather go out on a stage anywhere and just play and sing for an hour.

I would like to record. I would like to do some cabaret acts.

I think the reason I got into the music business was basically for the live aspect of it.

We record a lot of our shows, we record our soundchecks.

When I go back to seek inspiration - whether it be from Chuck Berry, Howlin' Wolf, the Beatles, Hank Williams, Ray Charles or Bob Dylan - it's from the performance. Those artists are in the studio playing their instrument and singing. There's no going back and redoing the vocals.

After Wings I did a lot of recording rather than live work. I even went into a kind of semi-retirement to places like Spain at one point.

I know of some guitar-based rock bands that refuse to record anything that they can't play live. But some of the best stuff I come up with are studio-based performances - bringing out whatever accident I had in the studio and building a song around that.

Recording should be fun.

I generally prefer to come in to the studio with a fully written song and then work on the arrangement with the band. Sometimes even the arrangements are pretty much already worked out in my head, but other times we experiment.

Studio work is very methodical, while live concerts must be very spontaneous.

I feel, in my live shows, I can be as dynamic as I want. It's my comfort zone. When I get in the studio, it's more of a solitary experience, which can be good creatively.