John Entwistle Quotes

During a big rock show, you can flub a few things and nobody will hear it, because it gets buried under everything else.

A lot of times you'll hear bands and it's a different sound coming out than what's on stage. Because you can clean it up through a PA and make it sound completely different than what they really sound like.

I have made stage adjustments which allow me to hear myself better onstage so that has made playing live much more enjoyable.

My live sound does not work in the studio, which is a completely different animal. Every little thing is detrimental to the sound. And if someone moves a mic, you've lost it. It's pretty much a case of 'lock the door and set up a police line.'

The more guitars we have onstage the better, as I'm concerned.

When you're onstage with an electric band going through a massive P.A. system, it's very artificial. You can't really hear your own voice as it comes out of your mouth.

I play a percussion instrument, not a musical saw; it needs no amplification. Where it's needed, they put a microphone in front of the bass drum. But, I don't think it's necessary to play that way every night.

We wanted to get everyone back focused on the fact we are playing live again. It really does sound great.

I like live-sounding things.

If you ever want to play bigger places, you need to have records that sound like you're playing in big places.

I feel, in a way, on a record, you can be more subtle. In the live setting, everything gets amplified. The dynamics are more extreme in concert.

I've asked to go back into theaters and smaller venues because to me, in smaller venues I can really demonstrate my commitment to quality. Theaters are great containers for music.

I personally don't like to use as many effects because when you play live, something always goes wrong.

We were gradually playing larger venues and in the early days PA systems were kind of non-existent. So to play loud, we had to use louder equipment. The PA systems back then didn't mic the instruments - only the vocals.

For live you need a microphone for the snare and the high hat, the kick drum, a nice stereo overhead and one for the toms - you can get away with using four mikes.

Amplifying acoustic instruments more than a little is really cheating, and everything becomes a compromise.

To be honest, I think about the clubs when I write. But I should probably start thinking about stadiums, because the songs sound even better there - and bigger.

I mean, the sound of an amplified guitar in a room full of people was so hypnotic and addictive to me, that I could cross any kind of border to get on there.

The sound has grown and sweetened over the years as well, and you can hear it on many of my recordings and, most likely, will see and hear me playing it if you come to a live show.

The fact that I'm often pushing my voice as hard as I can is from playing in nightclubs in Albuquerque where you don't have a good sound system.

It wasn't very satisfying playing the big arenas, but it was good as far as a paycheck. But the sound was terrible, especially in hockey arenas - the sound would go on for 30 seconds after we quit playing.

After that initial success, every chance we got we'd hire that remote recording truck and just record stuff at the Whisky because it was so inexpensive.

I went to see Alison Krauss and Union Station at Disney Hall and I would say it was one of the most astonishing sonic experiences I have had. It's an enormous room that's acoustically perfect. My interpretation of receiving music as a layman is that the way the music kind of settled on me in that room was perfection.

I feel like the live record thing is something that I've been getting used to as the years go by and with this being my second one, I'm continuing to learn what works and what doesn't work. A live record is an example of that authenticity and that realness that you find in imperfection and you can hear that in this record.

At the Isle of Wight, the sound went out and kind of kept on going. And I wasn't... when I came off stage I was kind of unhappy about how we had played. But now, I listen back to those recordings and it's not bad.