Benjamin Orr Quotes

I didn't leave the band to go solo so much as to stop feeling like a production item.

I love working with my band-mates in Alkaline Trio, but to make a rock record that was just mine was something that I wanted to do.

George felt the group wasn't giving him the freedom he needed to develop his songwriting. But I have to admit the end came a little sooner than I expected.

Honestly, I never felt like I wasn't an artist on my own. I always felt like the music I made was mine, whether it was part of a collaboration with people.

It's weird talking about the album as a living being with its own thoughts and direction, especially if you're the one creating it.

I feel like, throughout 'True Romance,' I was unsure of myself in terms of songwriting. Even though it was my voice, I feel there were a lot of other voices on that record, too.

I understand it's my role to realize people's dreams. I'm O.K. with that so long as my songs are my own. No one can take my songs away from me.

Roadrunner wanted to make Born in the Flood the next Nickelback, but I didn't want to be that. I didn't want to be a huge rock star playing songs I didn't like. I didn't want to be stuck playing 'Anthem,' the song everybody liked but I didn't want to put on the record, for the next five years.

I have to be involved. Whether it's me writing by myself or with other people, I definitely want to have my hand in the creative process. That's part of why I got into music in the first place.

I will concentrate on playing guitar, on lyrics and on singing. I am a part of things; I am not the encompassing 'Smog.'

I don't see myself as the boss. I sing and write the songs, and it would feel strange if somebody else wrote the lyrics I sang.

I don't dictate the solos and I don't dictate the vocal harmonies.

If I write for myself, I write a song and I bring in the musicians that are best suited to play it. There's a freedom there.

If you are any competent musician, if you have creative ideas, ideas of songs, of arrangements, in a band like the Stones, where these 2 people do all the things, there is no freedom.

There's something to writing a hook and something to writing a memorable melody. That's what I liked about musicals. Then I realized I could write my own songs, and I didn't have to sing other people's.

I don't want people to just hand me music and be like, 'Here, you sound good on this. Sing it.' I want to be able to say, 'This is me.'

We write our own songs, play our own instruments.

My parents were opera singers. I didn't want to play opera because I wasn't good enough. I didn't want to play their music; I wanted to play the music that I wanted to play, and I'm so lucky that today I get to play that music, even though I don't like every song I write.

We do write our own music.

I never felt like there were things I couldn't express lyrically in Vampire Weekend. I was always proud of everything that we wrote together.

I've always been in a band where it's been somebody else's band - or pretty much always.

I like to compose, but only for myself. I write my own lyrics and compose the music around them.

I think the real exciting part about becoming a solo artist is that you get to really decide on what your new sound and what your new message will be.

I don't create the movies I'm in. When it comes to music, it's my clothes, it's my guitar, it's my voice, it's my song.

There would be no Static-X if I didn't write all the songs.