Roger Andrew Taylor Quotes

Their eagerness for the big-band music and their ability to grasp the essence of it made me realize that today's generation has not been properly exposed to the big-band sound.

King Crimson were the only really famous band I'd been in.

I have a little history. I met Stone Temple Pilots, and their guitar player was a huge Extreme fan. Somewhere down the road, Extreme made its statement.

It's hard to say a favorite song of my father's. I listen to all his stuff - a lot of the old stuff before the '70s.

I like to take it back, cause I'm an old soul. Growing up, my brothers, I'd grow up hearing what they were playing, and that's how my taste has evolved.

I like 'Discipline.' That's my favorite King Crimson album.

Every Mr. Big album is an event.

I always say, 'Hey, I'm in Metallica, but I wasn't on the Black Album.'

That's kinda what happened to me: I listened to jazz, country, R&B, rock 'n' roll. And when I sat down to write a song, I had all these influences comin' through.

I always feel like the past informs my present musically.

When you're recording a ninth studio album, you can't fail. You don't really have any fears. You just make the best record that you like. You hope your fans are gonna like it, but if they don't, they have eight other ones to listen to.

I'm no Robert Christgau or Chuck Klosterman, but I would say that Landlady is like if Harry Nilsson was produced by Brian Eno. Or, if David Byrne fronted Wilco. Those are my two hoity-toity musical epigrams.

'Dangerous' is an album that I was very dedicated to. I wanted every song to be a hit.

You can put the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the same category, but the types of music, the colors each band evokes, are completely different. It's the same with Mozart and Beethoven - they express two very different aspects of music.

My first band, we wanted to be like Foreigner and Journey.

If nothing else, we grew up loving the old blues artists and Ray Charles.

When I was growing up, my dad would always be playing Motown around the house. He loved Stevie Wonder and the Supremes and got me into Dionne Warwick. It was the best music I'd ever heard. It was just that extremely deep, human, thought-out stream of ideas. You can always hear something new when you listen to that music.

We were big Clash fans, you know, big Who fans and I think we would listen to this music and talk about music and do nothing but music night and day, and when it came time to actually making our own music, you feel compelled to sort of tuck all those influences away, not show them.

Ask any rapper or singer what artist they are an expert on. What artist are they looking to emulate, and really, what artist is the one person they are an expert on? You see, if you want any kind of longevity, if you want any kind of legacy, you need to know what ancestral line you are from.

My favorite Kanye album is 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.'

The reason 'Fireball' is my favorite album of that period is that without 'Fireball,' we would never have been able to make 'Machine Head.'

I love to play the songs that got me to where I am. I like to take a little bit from all of my records and mix it up.

2112' basically set the course for my musical career and how I approached Dream Theater.

I always been writing songs since I was, like, six. I was listening to Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Frankie Laine and people like that. I was just in the backyard writing songs.

My mom was obsessed with Joni Mitchell; I grew up listening to so much of her music. But it was never a prerogative to emulate her.