John Petrucci Quotes

People sometimes say that bands sound like The Cars, but when I hear it I don't know if they do or not.

In the end, my children put me on to Pink Floyd when they were teenagers.

The first songs I learned was 'Crazy' by Patsy Cline and 'At Last' by Etta James. I had been growing up with the Beatles, Pink Floyd, great bands.

Well, obviously I wanted it to sound as original as possible. I suppose the influences that we had were probably from the actual power point of view we wanted to be like the Who. Vocally we wanted to be like the Beach Boys, whatever was good at the time.

My dad was a theater designer, and I spent a lot of time hanging around the dressing room listening to whatever the actors were listening to, which is where I heard Pink Floyd for the first time.

The reason I got into music was obviously because of bands like The Beatles and Pink Floyd, things like that.

Growing up, everyone around me in El Paso, Texas, was all about watching 'The Wall' and, you know, 'Money' and 'Dark Side of the Moon,' which are fantastic records, of course.

For me I look at a group like Queen or AC/DC or the Beastie Boys. There was melody within what they did. There was a certain style with what they did. I think it is coming back.

I am an old-school guitar player. I'm not an '80s-'90s sort of shredder who plays a million notes a minute. I am way more '60s-'70s kind of style, and I write very '60s-'70s.

It's always Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Waits for me - the big three.

I've always had an ear for melodies, and they veer pop. My lyrics are more country - what I love is the storytelling and the structure, how tight the rhymes can be. But pop melodies have always been intrinsically linked to my writing style.

I'm still obsessed with Kiss. I'm still obsessed with Van Halen. I guess we don't change that much from being kids. Either we don't change that much, or we just have really good taste.

I listen to a lot of Pink Floyd, the Doors, Elton John, Sabbath, Metallica, GN'R, Megadeth - just classic rock, classic metal stuff.

My first influences for playing were Johnny Ramone and Jimmy Page, the same as everybody else. Joe Perry. The guys in Alice Cooper's band, whatever their names were. Mick Ronson from David Bowie. You know who really influenced me to write songs? Iron Maiden.

Buffalo Springfield had three guitar players, and we thought they were so cool. So we started doing the three-guitar thing, and people started calling us the 'guitar army' and all this stuff.

Don't get me wrong, The Beatles are one of our all-time favourite bands, but there's a lot more we were influenced by.

When I was starting my journey as a young guitar player, I was listening to The Beatles, the Stones, and all the British invasion bands, Top 40, Motown, and all the great music of the '60s. Then the alien ship landed, and life changed again forever... Jimi Hendrix.

My experience with playing in odd time signatures was progressive rock and learning King Crimson songs as a kid coming up and maybe learning Pink Floyd, 'Money,' that kind of thing.

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

Growing up, I became a huge fan of Freddie Mercury, Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins. That's where I really started developing my songwriting skills on a personal level.

We have always been like The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac in that we have numerous lead singers.

What made 'Dark Side Of The Moon' so great is some of the mystique and where it was coming from and just the authenticity of it.

My dad would play 'The Blue Album' a lot, the first Weezer album, and that influenced my alternative indie thing and that's kind of how I found tons and most of my favorite bands.

My mam and dad were blasting Steely Dan when I was born; the music hasn't stopped since then.

I remember hearing people like Joe Cocker, Fleetwood Mac, and Elvis. My parents were big fans of them, and they were the early seeds. My brother was more into Slipknot, and I still listen to them, too, but it wasn't until I listened to Paolo Nutini that it really clicked.