John Rzeznik Quotes

On 'Van Halen,' I was a young punk, and everything revolved around the fastest kid in town, gunslinger attitude. But I'd say that at the time of 'Fair Warning,' I started concentrating more on songwriting. But I guess in most people's minds I'm just a gunslinger.

We toured for close to three years after 'Undertow' came out, so by the time we started to work on 'AEnima,' we had matured as functional musicians, and that changes your sound completely. Once you have that kind of freedom, an idea will come into your head and you can do it justice.

I think that every band tries to mature their sound through their existence, you know?

A lot of times, when a band finds success with a certain style or sound, they have a really hard time breaking away from that to grow as artists.

When I was 19, I joined a rock band, and that's when I began to say, 'Okay, this is something that I could take seriously.' When I came to Minneapolis, it just refined everything.

It's funny because as a composer, you want to hear your songs live on. I think a lot of times people will create a song and it becomes stagnant or something that they're no longer interested in playing, and they leave it alone.

My come-out record, '10 Day,' was the thing people were supposed to hear and figure out 'he's good' or 'he's not good.' 'Acid Rap' is the comeback tape, and it asks way bigger and better questions than, 'Is he good at rapping?'

There's been a progression in my sound.

The way I evolved was playing straight-ahead jazz into playing more fusion-type stuff just because I was young enough to get into it. As I get older, I find myself coming back to where I kind of started.

You have to grow with the music.

I think the music that I'm writing and the stuff I'm going to do as I age will age.

I started out in rock, but I didn't want to stay there, and haven't.

The first song that I wrote that I was proud of was probably 'Hunter' from the first record. But I listen that now and I don't know. I mean, it's got a good hook, but still. I'm proud of it. I'm as proud as I can be of all the ideas, but I think 'Party' showed a maturity that I don't think I had on 'Aldous Harding.'

If you actually go back and listen to my first album, there are some things on there that are kind of rock 'n' roll.

A lot of the songs that I wrote during 'Pt. 1' and 'Pt. 2' are the first songs that I ever wrote that sounded like that. I was in this phase - a certain creative space in my life - personally and musically.

I think that the only goals that we try to set for ourselves is to evolve musically.

We'll see some simplistic players for a while, who'll then get into more complicated things and evolve with their instruments. This is a cycle that happens over and over again in music.

I've been making music for a long time, since I was very young, but at the same time, I'm still exploring what works for me. I feel like I'm just starting out.

My first album was me finding myself and my voice, finding how I sing. I was rolling with the punches because everything was new to me.

Any band on their first couple records is just trying to keep up with their inspiration.

I think everybody knows my sound because I'm me, you know? But, on your fourth album, I think you've definitely gotta show growth because I definitely don't plan on being one of those cats that fade off. It's always about growing with me; I grew up over the years.

Every time I write a song my approach changes.

In between 15 and 20 - probably at around 17 - my interests switched from hard rock to punk rock. And then by 20 they were circling out of punk rock back into Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, the stuff that I didn't get to when I was younger.

Most good things happen with time; especially music, which needs time to breathe and to find its own way.

After playing with Rob Zombie, I was ready to go, 'OK, this is as far as I'm taking this bass-playing thing. This is the end of the road.' I was ready to kind of hang it up.