Allan Holdsworth Quotes

I think we make too many records. One record a year is crazy to me. But some people have to sell tickets. The label has to meet their quarterly number: 'We need a record a year.' All of a sudden, the tail's wagging the dog. It's not the music; it's everything else making the music. That's just backwards. It's wrong.

The thing about being on the majors, from the beginning, going into this, I was like, "I'm not going to be treated like a factory," because that's never the way it was done before. You're talking about a major label, we're talking about serious business; you're not an artist anymore, you're a business, you have to work in terms of product, you have to release a product, and I don't really think that way at all.

I produce the records. I don't hand over control to some really expensive producer who then talks to the record company and then tries to bend me to their will - for commercial purposes.

Generally, when a record label suggests album ideas for you, you smile politely, and then proceed to shoot it down, because it's never what you as an artist feel is right for you.

When you are signed to a major label, everyone wants to have a say in who you are and what you are doing.

It is hard, though, 'cos record labels love to boss you around. I won't let them do that anymore.

The artists in country music who stopped having hits are the ones who were led into something that wasn't them.

We try and stay out of the corporate side of it. The band has never compromised. At some point in our career we could have made a certain type of record and sold millions of units, as they are called.

If you say, 'I'm going to cut this song because I know the teenagers are going to love it,' well, then you're going to alienate everybody else. When I cut my record, I'm just going to cut the things that I like, and whoever likes it, likes it. That's too much work to try to figure out the demographic. That's too much like a business.

I didn't want the Ramones being told what to be doing, and I wanted the Ramones being presented in the right light - the remaining Ramones.

I don't like working with hitmakers. I don't want hits! You're not even allowed to say that word around me.

You don't necessarily pick the singles that you want when you're making a record, but for the most part it's the same process. You're the artist - you make the music that you want to make.

I like Modest Mouse. I'm our biggest fan. And enemy. I won't waste people's time by putting out a Modest Mouse record just because. That's fair, right?

The only thing they really get to pick is the single. But I get to pick the producer, the songs on the record, the final masters, the artwork. Basically, I hand them a record.

I'm not interested in forcing my music on people, and that's what the whole music industry nowadays is based on is forcing stations to play it, forcing people to listen to it.

I didn't want to be on a major label. I wanted all the attention and the noise to go away because I wanted to be something a little bit more substantial.

I had to beg to get out of my contract with Capitol. They wanted me to work with big producers. I wanted to produce my music, and they weren't having that. I'm sure they were happy to let me go. I just didn't want to do what they wanted me to do.

One of the most harmful things in the music industry is 'record-by-committee,' where 10 people from the label gather around, and they make you write a 100 songs and decide which one's a hit. That takes the inspiration out of it.

I think up until the 'Honestly' album it was very much label-company lead, of 'this is a sound that we need, this is what you need to do. You need to do ballads, you need to do a million different types of love songs,' and I hate ballads and I hate love songs.

The record label used to try and make us do stuff, like dance, and we'd say, nah, not doing that.

It's really tough - if you're on a major label and they want you to have a number one song, you need to do what they say.

We kind of reached this point in life where we don't really want to put out anything just to put something out. We really don't want it to be like, 'Two years are up. You've had your break; now do another record and get it out there.'

When you become a commodity to a record label because you're making them millions of dollars, you can take all of your artistic integrity and throw it out the window.

Corporations have steered the industry into what it wants, and a lot of times they will make artists record what it wants or to make songs talk to who they want to talk to. But sometimes the heart and the head have to be able to talk and deal with a situation that's evident.

My dream is to do whatever I want without any interference from the record company.