Tommy Ramone Quotes

When Kenny first came to me, I think he was thinking of making a nice little folk record, but in my opinion, folk music had come to an end and I felt he needed to go to the next step, the next generation.

If you actually go back and listen to my first album, there are some things on there that are kind of rock 'n' roll.

I like it when songs develop in some way. Four minutes usually isn't enough time for something to develop musically.

There's been a progression in my sound.

Our music is becoming more mature.

It's all a progression towards hopefully one day making a record that can be the definitive you can offer. Some bands come in with that at first, and the great bands never really stray from that. I want to earn my stripes.

I think that the only goals that we try to set for ourselves is to evolve musically.

We'll see some simplistic players for a while, who'll then get into more complicated things and evolve with their instruments. This is a cycle that happens over and over again in music.

Hopefully, as a band, it will grow and develop for a good length of time.

Music is all about wanting to be better at it.

I'm proud that with 'Bright Eyes' we've always experimented and tried to make a different record every time out.

But for the first time, we haven't made a huge leap forward in sound from our last album. Fans who own Kid A should be able to get their heads around it.

The Beginning of Survival is my best album. I am very proud of it, and I am surprised at it, too. I thought some of Travelogue was a little heavy, but I don't think this is heavy.

The lyrics came out of necessity. When we started writing the record, we started in a more fusion environment and that got boring really quick and that wasn't what we were about on an organic level.

I'm constantly on my toes and re-examining my own music.

It accumulates over the years and I've led so many bands of my own now and forced myself into new situations... You would hope that you play better and better - until you just get too feeble to do it anymore.

It doesn't really change, actually. I think The Rolling Stones have gotten a lot better. An awful lot better, I think. A lot of people don't, but I think they have, and to me that's gratifying. It's worth it.

Playing music is a lifetime's work. And if you want to carry on with it, you have to try to better yourself. You have to see where the music can take you.

As you grow older, your music begins to mature and grow older along with you.

When I listen to and play the songs from 'Narrow Stairs' now, that record feels like a record where we had established a style that arguably was more our own than it was in the beginning. Going into that record, I felt a lot more confident in my songwriting. It was a fairly prolific time for me.

I did country way back when I was, like, 13-14 years old, and then I kind of fell into the pop genre.

As my guitar playing dwindled, something else in my music got better.

If you look at the difference between the first Clash record and 'Combat Rock,' what an evolution.

We always try to make each record a snapshot of the band at that time.

I always feel I have a long way to go in my playing and my music.