Jim Messina Quotes

Music changes, and I'm gonna change right along with it.

People always want to talk about who I was, but I've always been singing, always been experimenting with pop music.

There's been a progression in my sound.

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

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.

I think music changes and it evolves.

New music is absolutely integral to classical music.

Music is a continuum and the modern and avant-garde composers of today will be part of the standard repertoire 30 years from now.

I'm very much a traditionalist, but I think it's important to know about tradition so that you can evolve the music you are deciding to make.

I've realised that if it is to remain relevant, contemporary music needs to change.

The first record was basically a quick, fast record. The second record, we were going for more of a poppier sound - like a heavy pop sound. For 'Rocket to Russia,' we'd sort of reached our pinnacle. We'd gotten really good at what we were doing, so that's like my favorite record - that's a really good record. It's just great from beginning to end.

If you've followed us from when we started playing live in October 2010, you will notice that there has been numerous changes over the years.

Music needs to move forward.

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 can see that if this was an album done 10 or 15 years ago we could see we were moving on to some place else.

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

It's like, how do you continue to make records that are representative of who you are that your fans will recognize as your band, while still trying to push things forward and present new sounds for people.

Music is changing. I'm just doing what I'm doing, and hopefully in the next 20, 30 years, some kids can take what I'm doing and change it again. If the music doesn't move, then it's dead.

Younger players in this music often turn out to be middle aged; it is not a young music.

Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die.

Music has to keep moving. But I was lucky. For me there was always something around the corner.

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.

I like it when songs develop in some way. Four minutes usually isn't enough time for something to develop musically.

In music, as I find myself forever saying, things don't get better or worse: they evolve and transform themselves.

Music's cyclical. There's always that next generation that always comes along.