Lee Ranaldo Quotes

The way I work on music is that I go into my studio, and I start playing music, and I see what happens, and... I never think about it.

If I get in the studio, it's very organic. I like to go off how I feel.

So the actual riffing came out of us just sitting there and doing it the way I think some people think we really did it, which is all spontaneously, and it really was.

One thing will lead to another and somebody will come up with a riff or a line or something we build from.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don't really know what we're doing and when we do, it doesn't seem to help.

I kind of make music where and when I can, and I guess that's why I collaborate so much.

When I start writing, I'll have a vague concept or I'll just have a title, and the song just goes on its own direction. Usually it goes in many directions within each song. They get really convoluted sometimes.

Sometimes I think that I want to do something strictly basic, really simple. Just with a few chords. But I won't have anything more than two or three sentences in my head. That kind of evaporates once I start playing and then it goes off in whatever direction.

I just go in the studio and write on the spot and see what comes out.

We have no general conceptual thrust for the band, other than trying to make music that keeps our interest. When things are novel, they are probably things we have discovered by accident or investigation rather than by design.

My formula is not thinking about what I'm doing; it's about still having fun and making music. I don't go into the studio with a thought pattern or certain goals in mind - sometimes I'll start with drums, other times I'll start with the piano - but it's all done spontaneously, so nothing is premeditated, and nothing takes a long time.

The fun for me musically is that you never quite know what works and why. So why pretend you do? Why not just put things together and discover, in the creative process, if and why they work? That approach has served me well.

A concert is my experimentation time. I practice playing something several different ways, but in a concert, inevitably I get more ideas onstage, in that combination of focus and adrenaline, than I could ever get in the practice room.

I know very dimly when I start what's going to happen. I just have a very general idea, and then the thing develops as I write.

I began in 1976, with small abstract paintings that allowed me to do what I had never let myself do: put something down at random. And then, of course, I realized that it never can be random. It was all a way of opening a door for me. If I don't know what's coming - that is, if I have no hard-and-fast image, as I have with a photographic original - then arbitrary choice and chance play an important part.

I don't know in advance what I am going to put on canvas any more than I decide beforehand what colours I am going to use.

See, if you put a musician in a place where he has to do something different from what he does all the time, then he can do that - but he's got to think differently in order to do it. He's got to play above what he knows - far above it. I've always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that's where great art and music happens.

You are not just, "This is the way I play it every night." You are constantly finding new ways in, new attacks, "I want to try it this way. Maybe this scene is affecting that scene. I want to attack this scene differently."

The way it always starts with me making my music is I will never, ever start with the production first. It's always me at the piano, fresh on the day. I never come with anything prepared.

In my music, I'm never going to force anything to try to recreate a moment or something.

All I'm trying to do is simply play guitar and elicit this creativity from the instrument.

When I'm in the studio, I'm experimenting, trying things on.

I'm not afraid to have a really weird idea or, you know, take a really bad guitar solo.

In the end, our way of writing music is a long process of experimentation. We enjoy the luxury of taking this very seriously and giving it the time that it needs.

In terms of creative engagement, I just love being able to produce, produce, produce. You don't always get it perfect, but it has much more of an improvisational element, and you learn.