Greg Lake Quotes

I didn't think anyone was going to buy 'Do You Really Wanna Hurt Me?' It was really personal, not a hit record, I thought. I wanted us to sound completely different. Shows how much I knew.

There's a lot of craft that goes into achieving a hit song - at the beginning of your career, you're usually more inspiration than craft, and you get great when those intersect. A skilled songwriter can get you to that intersection.

You don't just go to the studio and say, 'I'm going to write a hit.' It becomes a hit when people like your compositions.

I wrote 'Don't Stop' just like I wrote 'Pumped Up Kicks' - I didn't try to make either a hit. I just wanted to write a song I liked.

I don't sit down to write a number one hit. I'm not that good at my job - I don't know how to do that.

The act of song writing and recording became one and the same to me; because I essentially recorded everything I did from the day I began trying to write songs. I've always had a lot to say. I'd always written poems.

When I'm making songs, I never call them hits. I knew 'Bandz A Make Her Dance' was a good record, but I never knew it was gonna be a hit.

The first record we put out on Fueled by Ramon, 'The Papercut Chronicles,' we had no idea what the term 'producer' meant. It was just us writing songs, and we are trying to go back to that - singing in a room and vibing off each other.

Mike Campbell and Don Henley and I wrote 'The Heart of the Matter,' which was a huge hit for Don.

Sometimes, I make 50 songs and pick out the best 10. I've been in the studio all day, all night, making the beat, writing the raps. You never know what's gonna be a hit.

I've never written a song that I thought was a hit.

I can take a three-year-old and make a hit record.

I had my whole life to write a bunch of crappy songs and then play them in front of people and think, 'All right, that one out of these seven is really good; it's a keeper.' But on this second album, to be honest, I probably wrote about 50 songs where I was just trying to write a hit.

If 'Emotions in Motion' comes out right, I can write the book on the formula rock star.

My only real hobby is playing music. I write a lot of music on guitar and keyboards and hope one day to make a record or maybe even write the score for a film.

I can't just sit down and make a song in a day. It's only possible if you focus on the music and not the sound.

I write by myself and then deliver the song. Everybody knows, 'Leave Ester alone when she's in her zone.' Give me a studio and the tracks, and I'll call you when the doctor is done.

I actually quite like promo, which is quite odd for an artist, but recording's not the easiest thing.

I didn't have a lot to do with the first record.

For 'Narrow Stairs', the majority of the songs I brought in were guitar songs - songs we could sit in a room and just play. I can honestly say I had more fun and felt more inspired on this record than anything that we had done in a long time.

I'm always writing songs, and I've got a bunch that I want to record.

I've been in the studio when you go through a track and you run down a track and you know even before the singer starts singing, you know the track is swinging... you know you have a multimillion-seller hit - and what you're working on suddenly has magic.

I'm a synthesist. I'm always making music. And I make a lot of different kinds of music all the time. Some of it gets finished and some of it doesn't.

My first record was made in Termonfeckin, which is a small town on the north-east coast of Ireland. I had been in London, but it didn't click. So, at home, I didn't think about making something, just whether something could be made. There was no grand plan.

In 29 years, I had recorded over 2,200 songs. I was amazed.