Steve Brown Quotes

When we can figure out a way to really tour and make a profit, then we'll do it again.

The nature of touring is packaging acts together that have strong catalogues of music. It's about making sure that it's a winning combination. It's really about giving people value for their money.

So I've had lots of different bands over the years who have stayed with me for certain tours.

I'm on the road earning my money. I didn't get any million pound record deals. Not unless you're Jedward! I'm doing very well, but I still have a mortgage to pay off. So I'm on the road.

In our early period we pretty much survived or perished on our capacity to reach people, and on getting into the pattern of having no money and playing lots of shows.

You open up a lot of tours making nothing just for the fact that you need to start somewhere and get some exposure. When you start to headline your tours, all the money is in headlining, but there's no money in headlining small rooms.

My main professional experience is touring in a rock band.

We had so many friends who did the band thing, and one of their first moves was to go on tour, and they'd just blow all their money.

Limp Bizkit is my main priority, but my side project, Black Light Burns, is still a labor of love. We have a record written, so we'll see when that comes out. When we tour, we go out in a van and trailer with me driving.

You know, I didn't have enough money to quit my day job... the myth of the major label deal. Nowadays, you have a tour bus and a stylist and all this stuff. But back then, no way.

If you don't tour, you cannot expect to sell a huge numbers of your albums either. It was both a business - and an economical decision and we wanted to play anyway. We just wanted to get out for the tour when it was safe enough for us.

I've worked with a band, and it's nice to have someone to travel around with, but I didn't like it as well on stage.

But for me, I thought you made a record, you got on a bus, went out and played your shows and made a lot of money. That was the way it was supposed to go down. But there's a lot more to it than that. There are a lot of early mornings, late nights, a lot of traveling, a lot of being away from home, being away from your family.

For three years, between 16 and 19, I was the opening-act-for-the-opening-act-for-the-opening-act, you know? And then I was on tour with Ice-T, Stetsasonic, EPMD, Sir Mix-a-Lot - legends - and went on to sell 160 million records. It still baffles me.

The reason I don't tour is that I don't know how to front a band. What would I do? I can't really play anything well enough to deal with that situation.

I'm usually going to make a record, finish a record, start a record or start a tour or between tours.

Once you've been on tour six, seven years, you get an idea of what works and what doesn't work universally. There will be some crowds that we just can't play a song, but we've got 90% of a show that we know is going to be a hit with the Lupe Fiasco fan. I think the catering has already been done.

Playing live, you can't survive, certainly not in England. We used to work daytime jobs and play gigs at night. It was very exhausting.

My goal when I started out was to get to the point where I could tour a lot and make a living, which means getting paid enough to hire my own band, travel and end up with a bit of money, but I'm still nowhere near that point. Because I didn't have a band and fan base when I started, I did everything backward.

It's very hard to tour.

Nine Inch Nails is like building an army to go conquer. We build it, then we play, and we have to play so much to validate building it, financially. It leads to getting burn-out because a tour that would be fun if it lasted three weeks has to last 15 weeks.

Money's really - you know, song writing, yes, there's money to be made and things like that. But really, when you talk about the real money, you talk about touring. No question.

I think in 2016 I'm going to focus on performing a lot more and doing as many shows as I can. There's plans to tour more, and that's where my heart is - doing the live shows.

We all know the record biz don't pay. All musicians have day jobs - no matter how big they are.

Being my own boss and working inside an industry that's not really an industry, I need to keep busy and keep working. The only way to make money in music - unless you're managing someone - is to tour, and even that depends on where you are at.