Robert Wyatt Quotes

Lately Fish and I have been hooking up more, which is a good thing because it's just been a struggle for me as a bass player to play with someone who's so creative on the drums, and lately it's been really good, especially during sound checks.

If a band is really good and the chemistry is unique, it should continue. But I guess David is just very happy doing his solo career. He's got a different band every time he goes out.

Bands are about these little relationships that make everything tick, and when you create new music you're testing those relationships.

The way Yes works is when we have a new member come in, as in Jon Davison, it's appropriate that we see what differences we can get out of a new contributing member in order to keep Yes interesting.

Your band members? Your band members don't want to be tied to a machine. They want to be playing. That's what the Beatles did. And the Beatles' stuff is timeless. That's what I would suggest. Just get back to sweating, playing hard, hammering, and having a blast.

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

When you keep the caliber of musicians very high in the band, people are going to come and go. Some of them will be people who have to try various things, it's natural.

A lot of the songs are written on piano or guitar, so I contribute, and I have done so since the beginning. So it's been good to be involved completely musically as well.

Yeah, well, it did earlier - but as Bobby and I have played together, our thing as a unit has become so strong that they kind of had to get in where they fit in. And most people do.

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.

I wanted to make good records. But my problem is I've got a low boredom threshold, so I wanted it to look and sound different with each album, which is really tantamount to suicide, cause people lose it, they lose it - they say: 'I like that, and that's not this.'

With Pearl Jam, everybody is so good at what they do, it's hard to get up the courage to say, 'Can I sing this part,' or, 'I want to play guitar.'

It's easy to put on a Deep Purple record and say, 'That sounds great.' But why? Part of it is individual practice, but by playing together, a talent of meshing happens.

There has to be an interaction of musicians on stage. Otherwise I feel too alone up there. When performing is really good, when it really works, maybe once every 15 shows, it's very special, and you realize that's why you do it.

I think my music has always been a mixture, depending on whom I'm working with - what band, what musicians, what producer.

I think it was probably down to the fact that we weren't together personally as a band. We weren't pulling in the same direction. I always feel if you're having a good time in the studio it actually comes across on the tape and that was a bit of a miserable album for us.

Every band needs it's own special chemistry. And Bez was a very good chemist.

Towards the end with Pantera - although I was never unhappy with the music we were making - it became one-dimensional, and we wanted to open things back up.

Luckily, I'm in a band with two other guys who really pull their own weight and have the skills and abilities to compensate for my weaknesses.

The other guys in Hootie were into rock. I brought the country influence.

Everybody in Lynyrd Skynyrd loves different styles of music, and our minds are very open when it comes to writing our songs and making the band true to what the band is, but also stepping out and doing something current.

We were friends for a year before we started playing music together. We both think it's pretty important. Tyler's my friend before he's a guy in my band, and when we talk to each other about things, it comes from a friend standpoint, not just a business standpoint.

The band changes one guy, sometimes the whole damn thing changes - look what happened when I joined Van Halen.

In all of my years in this business, I've always been part of either a progressive band or a metal band.

I tend to want to form bands and then create new music within them. Queen was an exception, and we joined forces because it just seemed to work when we played together.