Danny Carey Quotes

In our band, every member has input, but me and Steve do the majority of the writing. We start the songs, the rest of the band help us finish it.

We always feel there are 3 parts to the song. The most important part is the reason it should exist. Our process usually consists of me sitting at the piano & Bob hovering over it. We throw ideas out...I start to play something...he'll hum something to make it better. He'll throw a line to me, I'll twist it to make it better and we scramble around like that for sometimes hours and days, 'til we both agree we've got something to show! That's how it works!

I think getting the rest of the guys in the band to write is important.

Usually, when we write in The B-52s, it's quite a collaborative process. We really take hours - and sometimes days - jamming, and then we listen and listen to them and go, 'Oh, let's use this part, and then this part.' It's really like a collage.

I've always written by myself. I've never been in a situation where the whole band sat in a room and wrote a song. I don't work that way.

It's not like I'm writing full songs or full parts and setting it aside for Slash because, generally, I like him to make the first move and hear where he's coming from and what his concepts are, and then I build from there.

The song could start with a riff that I base the song around. Or a chord progression or a melody I have, I just write a story about it. Lyric-wise, it's cool to have someone else's input too.

I'm not that type of musician where I can sit down at the piano and work out a song; I actually really enjoy that process of sitting with somebody and having nothing and then suddenly something starts appearing. You struggle with it, and then suddenly a song starts to appear. Then, you've got to try and muscle it - there's that word again - into something and you do. You tussle with it and play with it and roll around with it and suddenly, magically, something appears.

We all write the music, and then Mark and Tom write the lyrics.

The band set up in January and just started rehearsing. If there was a song, we'd just rehearse it as a band, and it would get arranged as a band, and it got changed around a lot.

You know, songs often have a very coloured past. They might have something about them but it still doesn't work, so someone else adds a bit, and someone else adds a bit so perhaps one day I'll know its full history.

And the thing about me is, I have a lot of mellow songs, because they're the easiest for me to write. I wanted to try to make some more upbeat songs, so, I ended up gravitating toward writing songs with friends, which was a great learning process, and also we came up with great songs. Those are the songs that came out the most naturally.

Sometimes one of us will have a riff or a bass line from home but it really gels when we come together. We really have a strong special chemistry that we take advantage of when we get together.

Our albums just tend to be collections of songs really, because we all write in the group, all four of us.

Well, our songwriting process is pretty collective.

I wasn't writing the music. Ed would write a piece of music. I'd listen to it and come up with a melody and then we would arrange it. We'd put it together and I would write lyrics to my melodies.

I've actually thought very little about solo work up until just very recently. Most of it is because in my band, Incubus, it is very much a collaborative effort. I do what I do in the band, and everyone plays their respective parts, but in the end, we are sort of a democratic process.

Usually I write the songs at home and then I bring them in to the band; when we play them as a band, that's kinda how we figure out the feel of how they're going to be presented on the record or live.

We always feel pretty creative as far as writing songs. We write them together; we just get in a room, or on occasion in Flea's garage. We just sort of improvise, like jazz musicians.

We wanted to sit down and conceptually work out songs.

When I think back now to the recording sessions, there is more improvisation than one hears. It's an ideal combination of arrangements and improvisation. Only a few people are able to listen and say what is composed and what is improvised. It's a unit.

When we were making Speaking in Tongues and Remain in Light, we were jamming. From that we were taking the best bits and then recording and improvising on top of those.

For me, the music dictates the melody. Give me a riff to sing over, you know?

When you work with a band, obviously you've got to present them with something they can get a hold of, so it has to be a little more fleshed out as a song. And then where it goes is more collaborative, obviously; it's more political possibly, certainly more a conscious process than a subconscious process, which the painting can be.

Luckily, I'm in a band with two other guys who really pull their own weight and have the skills and abilities to compensate for my weaknesses.