Robert Plant Quotes

I've never had a very quiet voice. I tried in choir to make it smaller, and it just didn't work out. And I listened to a lot of soul music when I was growing up on my own accord. But I was mostly into Mama Cass and Gladys Knight, and they all had big voices too; just different than mine.

I think the musicians I play with solo do a certain thing that the musicians we play with with the Indigo Girls don't do. It's just a different thing. And it sort of steers my writing in some ways.

'The Haters' has some of the generalities of band experiences that I've had - the camaraderie, the grubbiness, the outsized collective ambitions and frequent painful collisions with reality - but very few of the specifics. I guess it was a way for me to take some of my experiences to their logical crazy extremes.

Unfortunately, the record I did with Motley wasn't exactly a huge success. But working with those guys was a huge learning experience as well as a really creative time, so I had an absolute blast during that five years of my life!

I was living and working with adult men who were playing a real art form. And I had been playing blues all my life. As soon as I formed my first band, we played Jimmy Reed stuff. So it wasn't like I was a white kid who was learning the blues from B.B. King records.

There's nothing that compares to being in a band with your best friends. We're so comfortable together, we understand each other. It feels, like, normal. Whereas solo period felt like I was trying to be something, and play a role, and pretend.

I'm just trying to make the best music I can possibly make and represent the new class or whatever. Myself and Cudi and Asher and B.o.B. That's all I can do at this point.

Well, at the very beginning of the Amboy Dukes, I was doing background but I never sang my own songs. I would sing them for the guys to show them how I wanted the songs to go, but I always had lead vocalists.

Even though there's reasons to try things that may or may not work, it's still a real intimate way to finish the song with everybody right there in the band just locked in.

Caitlin Cary and I were always talking about X when we talked about whiskeytown, before it became an actual band. We like the concept of there being no real front person in X, yet this kind of switch up of vocals and really their sheer power, and their ability to sort of bastardise punk rock and midwetsren rock and even country into their own sound.

Obviously I still gig on my own, but I've always heard my music with a band.

The one radio voice that I listened to above others belonged to Ella Fitzgerald. There was a quality to her voice that fascinated me, and I'd sing along with her, trying to catch the subtle ways she shaded her voice, the casual yet clean way she sang the words.

No one can sing like June Carter so I just tried to sing my very best.

I prefer the band aspect of things. I feel comfortable. It feels good to look to my left and right and see three other people on stage with you that love music as much as you.

Actually, it's great to play with someone who tries to come up with interesting drum beats because it pushes the music in different directions.

In high school no guys wanted to be in a band with me unless I was going to play bass or play grindcore or be in a scream-o band, so it was fun to finally have that experience of having my songs backed by a drummer and a bassist who were just as excited about it as I was.

As a singer, you need to find you water that works for you.

I'd seen the Led Zeppelin reunion and I've never been such a huge Led Zeppelin fan as much as the Doors or Beatles. I went and saw the reunion and watching them play "Stairway to Heaven," it was very breathtaking for one reason mostly. I can imagine these two guys looking at each other, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. Not to compare us to Led Zeppelin, but I did miss the fact that I could look over at the guy, Twiggy Ramirez, that wrote "The Beautiful People" and "Dope Show." Emotionally, it's taken a long time to repair that.

I've got to include things like "I've Got A Crush On You," and put my stamp on it with the (openly gay) saxophonist Dave Koz.

Denzal Sinclaire embodies the tradition of the great singers I love like Nat Cole, yet definitely has his own voice. He is one of my favourite singers.

I haven't had that many people onstage for a while, and I'm looking forward to that. They're all such creative musicians in their own right. They're all complete individuals. They're not just a pick-up band. They all have their own thing going on.

When I'm putting the character together I try to find music that I think fits the character.

I'm not a folk-singer. I just sing a certain place.

Music has always helped me stay creative and grounded because I'm traveling and shooting and trying to understand other people. Music was something I could just sit in a room and make with my friends.

I didn't write any music at all, and then, I remember Jon Anderson being very insistent saying that there were two kinds of musicians: the ones who wrote music and the ones who didn't. And clearly the ones who wrote music were more superior human beings in his mind. So he kind of nudged me and sort of prodded me into it. I picked it up slowly. Then I learned more about chords and harmony and I just kept adding to that. One of the great things about having good players in your band is that you just ask them questions. You can pick up some good information that way.