Billy Squier Quotes

I've never really heard anybody imitating anything of mine the way they do with Edward Van Halen's stuff.

They have all different names for music. I think the music I'm going to change the style with is going to be really, really big-years and years after I'm gone.

If you want to be negative about the whole thing you can say all guitar bands after the Beatles were just a waste of time because the Beatles were the best. I think it's far better to give new records a try.

Music is changing. I'm just doing what I'm doing, and hopefully in the next 20, 30 years, some kids can take what I'm doing and change it again. If the music doesn't move, then it's dead.

So I learnt a few country western songs, I bought a chord book, and right away I started writing my own stuff, which nobody else did that, I don't know why.

People like Prince don't have to care about anything, but they care because they want music for the future to be great.

I think that of my 21 symphonies, each has its own place.

As far as long-term goals, one of my favorite artists ever is Tegan and Sara, because every single one of their albums sounds different. Or Beck. I want to be like that because I come from so many different types of musical backgrounds.

I don't think there's such a difference between older and newer music as there is between one composer and another.

Just based on the primary adage of the necessity breeding innovation, it was just like 'Well, what makes me the guitar player that I am?' and I feel like I listen to so much different music, and I'm a student of so many genres of music, and I feel like it's fun to apply those things and anything super applicable to any type of music.

There are more inspirational people in music than there are in politics.

I was proud to work with the great Gershwin, and I would have done it for nothing, which I did.

Jeff Beck is my idol .. sometimes he finds notes that I just do not have on my guitar. Frank Zappa's another one .. I loved Frank Zappa ... I do think Van Halen reinvented the guitar ... he's an excellent musician, a shrewd guitarist and as a person he's wonderful.

Composers are very individual creatures.

It's neat to hear a new generation of musicians come up.

Our music did not sound like the Beatles in any way, shape or form. I could never find it in myself to use those Beatles tricks in Styx records because they were sacred to me. But what they did always influenced my thinking.

I never tried to emulate The Beatles, and I never really wanted to be like The Rolling Stones. I never really felt that I had the look or the demeanor of veteran musicians.

There are so many forms of soul: David Bowie was soulful as hell; Johnny Cash was soulful as hell; you also have a Prince, a Stevie Wonder. I want to bring my perception of that and not live inside the box of, 'This is the type of tracks you get,' 'This is the type of drums you get.'

You'd walk by MTV an hour ago, and you come back, and it seemed like the same song was playing. I want to stay as far away from that as I can in my band.

My dad is my biggest musical inspiration.

Prince, I think, trained amazing musicians to bring more to any musical table they come to.

Dream Theater has never been a band that hit at a particular fashionable point and said, 'OK, that's basically it.'

Just by nature, we're always filled with so many ideas and want to cram as many ideas into a song as we can, and I think that gave us a lot of our signature sound.

Stylistically, we're trying to push things in different ways, but it always comes out sounding like Tool no matter what we're trying to do.

One of our biggest pet peeves is listening to bands that use harmony guitars for the sake of it. If you can't figure out how do something different than Maiden, UFO, or even Boston, then what's the point?