Vinnie Paul Quotes

To be a great band it's like you have that telepathy. You know when the bass player's in back of you without even looking. You know when your guitar player's coming up to you to lean up to you and sing into your microphone. You just know these things. You feel it. You feel the energy of it.

To me, the secret of Eddie Van Halen was Alex Van Halen, because the way Alex played was so loose and the way the two of them locked together… Those two are connected so thoroughly they might as well be one person.

I don't ever have any bass in my monitors at all; I instead like to lock in with the guitar. I know the bass player has got to be locked in with the drummer, but to me, metal music is about the guitar and drums locking in and operating like a machine together. I played with my brother forever, and we were magically locked in together.

It's hard to find five musicians who know what the other is going to do before they do it. And that's what we had in GN'R.

Lately Fish and I have been hooking up more, which is a good thing because it's just been a struggle for me as a bass player to play with someone who's so creative on the drums, and lately it's been really good, especially during sound checks.

When Phil and I hit that one spot where I call it 'The Everly Brothers,' I don't know where it is. 'Cause it's not me and it's not him. It's the two of us together. I sing the lead, and so I can drift off. Then we'll come back in together and the whole thing happens again. It amazes me sometimes.

Led Zeppelin was a band that would change things around substantially each time it played... We were becoming tighter and tighter, to the point of telepathy.

Singing duets is instinctive, intuitive.

The piano and the singing are two equal things to me - maybe not inseparable but very connected. You can say they are like two equal voices.

The wonderful thing about rock music is even if you hate the other person, sometimes you need him more, you know. In other words if he's the guy that made that sound, he's the guy that made that sound, and without that guy making that sound, you don't have a band, you know.

The group-effort sound in recording of 'Sea Lion' is like, you really hear all the people in the room and hear them interlocking. There's a real freight-train energy of all these people at the same time playing.

Andy Rourke and I had been playing together from 14 or 15, and we had a very great musical chemistry. Andy's just a very respected and unusual musician.

Yeah, it's a lot harder to find a musical partner than a love partner.

That's the one part where being brothers makes a difference. It's just instinct. That's the charm of what the Everly Brothers are: two guys singing as one.

I never considered myself a songwriter, but now since I've been working with Nick Lowe, I am contributing to an extent. But I'm the guitarist and he's not, so we compliment each other in a way.

The first time we performed as a duo, we had already been playing together in various situations.

We've always connected musically in Fleetwood Mac because we're the only people who play more than one note. I'm not the best pianist, but I know how to interlace around what Lindsey's playing.

The longevity of a band is really contingent on loving the people that you're making music with and being able to get along in the long run. It's just like being married, except you're married to more than one person!

We have a certain bond that we don't have with anyone else on the planet. You just have that bond, that journey when you are in a band together.

Andy Timmons is someone I've jammed with many times over the years, and we always have a great chemistry when playing together.

When you play with another piano player, it's just second nature to play the parts that need to be played.

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.

We're all players and musicians and we sure all get along good. We just clicked right off the bat. We started playing and then we almost immediately started recording.

I love playing with Jeff. That's something I never really say in the press, but he's my favorite bass player. I've played right next to him for 10 years.

Yeah, well, it did earlier - but as Bobby and I have played together, our thing as a unit has become so strong that they kind of had to get in where they fit in. And most people do.