John 5 Quotes

I've always been a good imitator. I love music. But I'm just not that original.

You just keep playing. If someone special comes along and organizes it in a new way, then you'll have another approach and everybody will jump on it to try to learn.

I have a curiosity that compels me to find ways to make music that are fresh and new.

A lot of songs are derivative of each other. Sometimes you need to take a departure from what you do to something that's slightly different in order to get inspiration.

It's a great honor when somebody takes your song and does something different with it. That's what music is all about: to constantly change what somebody else has done.

Music. It's all creativity right here, right now.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

I started doing up-and-down strumming, basically to keep time and to play fast. As time went on, I started realizing other guitar players couldn't do it. I always went against the grain.

I only have one note, let's be honest. But I'll play a different version of that one note.

Any good music must be an innovation.

I always strive to make my music unique.

We always want to do covers, but we found it kind of boring to do covers of bands in our genre, and we were always asked to do those.

Music is all about creativity.

As a songwriter, you always want to search for something that's right in front of you that you can twist into something new.

I feel like my music is like - there are always new influences in there.

A lot of people from my generation of music are so focused on playing things correctly or to perfection that they're stuck in that safe place.

We were playing popular music, but we were doing our own arrangements because we were too lazy to sit down and figure out the originals.

I can't re-define music every week!

I shall always respect the composer. If I embellish, it is his idea I am embellishing.

Presented with a song like Exit Music, It's impossible to know what to add without actually making it worse. How can you play along when It's already there?

Any new ideas go into PiL. My inspiration is everything that the human being gets up to. I don't listen to any music when I'm in PiL-zone, because influences can poison your well. Otherwise, I listen to anything.

I may sing the same songs for over 40 years now but I always sing them in different ways in order to keep the excitement and passion alive.

You'll find little schools of musicians experimenting with different ways of making music in Brooklyn, all through Manhattan, in Queens, in Jersey, you know? The city is still bubbling with creativity.

I'm definitely a risk-taker with my music.

No, it's not dissatisfaction that inspires me to tinker with my songs, it's just restlessness.