John Bonham Quotes

The less people that are on the stage, there's more drama. You start living the music with each individual. When you see a band with ten people on stage, just a huge ensemble, you don't know who's doing what.

Because Larry, by then, was a drummer, who would sort of get bored and tired, and rather stand up and blow kisses to people. So we needed the bass to sort of drive along.

I love when an artist can stand by themselves and play their guitar and hold a crowd, but I also love bells and whistles.

The music is fun. The big difference performing it live is that we might get a little more heated, not as subdued, we'll stretch things out more. It's how you stay fresh after such a long time in the business.

The power of live music is vast. Live music is a wonderful way to spend some time.

I love performing. The sounds coming at me are dynamic, colorful and multi-layered. The energy from the musicians around me and from the audience is a swirl of excitement. Sometimes, I can feel the stage vibrating under my feet.

I can be a traditionalist but also play with Luke Bryan and get the crowd to go crazy. I think that mix is a lot of what has kept me going and kept people fired up about the music.

When I'm playing with my band, I designate different parts to feel different things. The bass pounds in your chest when you go to a concert. It almost replaces your heartbeat. Then the drums you feel on the floor.

There's an awful lot of resources that can be drawn upon in an improvised music concert.

Well, you can't throw heavy, analytical, thought-provoking songs at people 24/7. It's been my experience over the last 20 years that on a rare occasion, in a live setting, if you can slow people down to listen to two good ballads, then you're doing pretty good. Then throw a tempo at 'em. Then have fun.

It's been a long time since we've been out there playing new material, and we have really enjoyed that. Of course we still enjoy playing the Yes standards as well, but it's great to have a bit of a challenge and pull off new material.

You play with the audience, and they play back with you. They get into it, and then everybody gets into it. I don't want to be like a monkey on stage and just go through the motions because then it wouldn't be fun anymore. I just pay attention to the audience and appreciate the fact that somebody wants to see us. That gets me psyched.

Somewhere along the line, a concert became a variety show. It was no longer enough for four dudes to play together in front of some guitar amps. Costume changes, an army of dancers, and Broadway theatrics suddenly became standard for a 'concert.'

Live music is better.

I'm 90% performer, 10% musician. I've always said that Gossip are a band I would go see, not a band I would listen to.

With horns and a full rhythm section, the drums always looked like the best seat in the house.

Music is a performance and needs the audience.

It wasn't just about flashing lights and pinball machines blowing up and things like that. It was about using encores, bringing back the good songs and using techniques that I knew about from rock performance.

I'm very proud of my records, but my most natural creative tendencies have been in live performing. There's a beautiful element to recording and making records, but I've always felt a little shy with it.

Not that there weren't great shows, and not that there wasn't plenty of fine music played. It's just that the consistency and the height of where we could take it, with the help of the audience, was less, I felt, in the '90s.

Classical stuff takes a lot of rehearsal time and preparation, but with stuff that involves improvisation, you can over-rehearse it and it gets stale. You don't want it to be too comfortable. In fact, a good sound check, a good rehearsal usually means a bad performance.

A performance is only as good as the audience you are playing to. A lot of times you feed off of the audience, and we always try to give them all we've got and sometimes you don't get a lot back, but we've never been dead whenever we've performed.

I try not to punish the audience by making them listen to too much acoustic guitar.

There's a wonderful tradition of jazz people getting on stage and jamming and finding some feeling for music with audiences who may be fresh. For others, it might be just like a comfortable shirt they've been wearing.

I don't know how other bands play the same songs every night.