Ian McLagan Quotes

Am I the man who killed Deep Purple? I don't think so. I think every band from that era, even if you look at Led Zeppelin, if you look at their first four albums, they're extremely different from one another, and I've never made the same album twice.

The band changes one guy, sometimes the whole damn thing changes - look what happened when I joined Van Halen.

I felt that The Who had ended because we'd lost touch with our original Shepherd's Bush audience.

We didn't gel with Poison and the Bon Jovi. Bon Jovi was the best of the pop metal bands, but we never fit in with the hair metal stuff. We were never as hip as the Chili Peppers. We were in the middle.

I think when you follow a band, you're following a - and I don't like to use the term 'brand,' but you are following a kind of style, if you like. So I think you have to accept that there will be different people involved from time to time.

You know, Rolling Stones songs all sound kind of the same.

One of the things that always disappointed me as a kid, growing up, was when you could tell the singer had a fancy for something different and turned the band into something else.

I just don't care that much about the band name. I'm not so precious about it. The Harpoons were different people, but The Boy-Friends were and are the same people as The Visions. I changed it to The Visions when we made 'Transangelic Exodus' because I guess we didn't feel so friendly and boyish anymore.

We have always been like The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac in that we have numerous lead singers.

There's always a Van der Graaf audience that wants to hear the band's sound. And totally fair enough. Why not? It's a band. You like the band, you like the band.

That's why it's called Sebastian Bach. I mean, it's a permanent band, pretty much, but if I jam with other people, it just makes a better album, I think.

You know, I was never totally thrilled with being a Fleetwood Mac member, but surprisingly, I was having such a good time reuniting with John, Mick, and Stevie.

It's a big shame, because 'Trixter' in my mind were what a real rock n' roll band is all about.

We play it differently now. If we did the album now it would be different.

The Heads were the only band on that scene that had a groove.

I certainly didn't want to be in a punk rock band, because I had already been in a punk rock band. I wanted to be in a band that could do anything - like Led Zeppelin.

I love those Keith Richards solo records, but it's not the Rolling Stones.

With AC/DC, we've always started with rock, and we've just kept it going. The critic's view is always, 'They just made an album and it's the same as the last one.' I'll have fifteen of them, anytime.

I was so frustrated in Sabbath after the last few albums. I just didn't like the musical direction Sabbath was going in.

By the time The Band did The Last Waltz, the chemistry had changed, and it wasn't a thrill anymore to live that studio kind of life.

The way Yes works is when we have a new member come in, as in Jon Davison, it's appropriate that we see what differences we can get out of a new contributing member in order to keep Yes interesting.

We became friends as we became a band. Our friendship evolved as the band evolved. It had its ups and downs, but it was mostly ups for the four of us. We got along well almost all of the time. Hey! We liked each other and we still do.

Ian Gillan, Roger Glover and I wanted to be a hard rock band - we wanted to play rock and roll only.

Sleater-Kinney becomes bigger than the three of us. It pulls us along, in a way.

I really liked them, not just Syd, but all of them. Roger was very important, I thought, his contribution. And so was Rick's organ playing. It was a good band. It became something else completely, obviously.