Eddie Van Halen Quotes

Phish is such a good band; they just make stuff up as a jam band.

When we played with the Rollins Band, we'd keep songs going until we felt like ending it.

I love to play smaller crowds with the Rhythm Kings.

'Even Flow' is the best to play live because of the long solos. It starts out slow and builds, and, depending on what the audience does, I can reflect that in the solo.

Once we started headlining at the Fillmore East, we were free to play all night, at least for the second set. 'Whipping Post' could get lengthy.

In the past, we never really had that kind of spontaneity on record. When you start touring, you play songs in a certain way and then I start to feel like it's tough to really get lost in my playing.

Hopefully I'm bringing to rock n' roll the kind of spontaneity that I love, and always believed rock and roll stands for.

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

So the actual riffing came out of us just sitting there and doing it the way I think some people think we really did it, which is all spontaneously, and it really was.

There's not much in the way of written-down arrangements - just things that Gerry and I have worked out, from playing spontaneously together and hanging on to whatever seems to fall in right.

It's hard to beat the visceral high of playing live and creating something spontaneous.

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 think the drummer should sit back there and play some drums, and never mind about the tunes. Just get up there and wail behind whoever is sitting up there playing the solo. And this is what is lacking, definitely lacking in music today.

I like to be sort of grounded with Fish. But, at the same time, I think probably what's unique about us is the way other dynamics happen, where I'll play off Trey for awhile. When we start playing a jam, I don't usually know what's going to happen, I don't have a plan.

In the Led Zeppelin shows of the Sixties and Seventies, it was the same numbers every night, but they were constantly in a state of flux. If I played something good, really substantial, I'd stick it in again.

There is still nothing under the sun quite like a Grateful Dead concert.

The music has a better feeling when you're responding to what's going on. Music is like playing handball, playing catch with someone, not playing golf. Everywhere the ball bounces is where you respond to it.

My records are one thing. My live performances are something totally different because they're very improvised performances.

Thundercat, specifically, is insane. I'm always surprised at the things he comes up with when we're jamming out together. I gotta try to keep up with him and his ideas, be able to respond without speaking, and come through with some more music. He challenges me to keep it musical and not so computer.

One of the things I like to do is to try to jam with everybody.

There are songs I really enjoy playing. I like playing "Say It" live because it's a long jam, kind of like shoegaze, so I do enjoy that.

We're all about trying to play better every night, not just singing hit songs ... we ad lib, and every night there's jamming .. it's almost like the Grateful Dead meets Buck Owens some nights, because we'll go off on little adventures and sometimes we do crash the bus!.

To me, a sure-fire way to get in a rut is by sitting around playing by yourself for too long. You've gotta get out there and jam, man! You don't have to necessarily be in a band, all you've gotta have are a couple of buds who play too. They don't have to be guitarists either; jamming with a bassist or a drummer is cool.

I like more of the club mentality, where we're playing, and if we feel like we want to play a cover, we'll switch to that.

The best way for me to teach myself an instrument is to just jam on it, and sound awful sometimes, and sound great other times.