Bernard Sumner Quotes

I think getting the rest of the guys in the band to write is important.

That's why it's called Sebastian Bach. I mean, it's a permanent band, pretty much, but if I jam with other people, it just makes a better album, I think.

When I did my solo album, I put on a song that I'd planned for Toto that never made an album constructed from a great drum track with Jeff and a bass track with Mike and the guys loved it.

In our band, every member has input, but me and Steve do the majority of the writing. We start the songs, the rest of the band help us finish it.

Because I write the music, I write the lyrics, I write the vocal melody lines - I write everything. Just because I let somebody sing something doesn't mean they're more important than the bass player or the keyboard player or the drummer.

Coldplay are just four friends trying to make great music.

A lot of times, I played bass on songs. Gene plays guitar on some songs.

Sometimes I like to make music together with a singer or with singers.

I got a couple on per album but my problem was that I wanted to sing the songs and not let Roger sing them.

Artie is a singer, and I'm a writer and player and a singer. We didn't work together on a creative level and prepare the songs. I did that.

Whoever hired me might've just heard 'Refugee.' Well, I'm not the secret to 'Refugee.' The secret to 'Refugee' is the song. But if somebody really good calls me up to play on something because they like the way I played on 'Refugee,' then I wind up playing on another really good song.

When you're in a band and there's five of you, you have to accommodate five people in every song.

When we came into the studio I became more and more me, making the tracks and choosing the musicians, partly because a great deal of the time during Bridge, Artie wasn't there.

When you're in a band with three writers, three great writers, you only get one third of the writer thing. So that's the whole reason that I did a solo career. And that's, you know, when I told Fleetwood Mac I was going to do that, they were of course terrified that I would do that record and then that I would quit.

Writing music and lyrics, you tend to become a control freak - sitting alone in your room with a bare light bulb over your head, writing communist manifestos.

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.'

I'll come in with a string of riffs and direct the musical ideas. But you still need a band and their input to make the ideas come alive. You can't underestimate band chemistry.

Eliminating the piano means that I've always worked closer with the bass than most players.

That was when Neil discovered Jack Nietzsche. They went off and pretty much came up with that by themselves, but I thought it was a great song, and I was more than happy to do my harmony parts on it.

I love bands that can collaborate, and I feel like the Rolling Stones wouldn't be nearly as great as they are if it wasn't for them having a real group.

A friend and I started a band together. I am kind of learning how to play instruments. We write stuff over Skype or e-mail. I send one part and he writes another.

That said, everything's important, and every musician who plays on the record is an integral part of it.

Almost every band has somebody who's the main songwriter and who has a vision, a very clear idea of how a song should be.

With 'Light,' I collaborated with a lot of different producers and musicians I respected, and we all wrote and worked on material which I then took to an old-school producer, David Kahne, and we put it all together. The lyrics came first - they were written before the music.

When I think back now to the recording sessions, there is more improvisation than one hears. It's an ideal combination of arrangements and improvisation. Only a few people are able to listen and say what is composed and what is improvised. It's a unit.