Jim Root Quotes

It is not about writing those hits again. I am sure I could write them, but it is about the sensibilities.

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

There's been a progression in my sound.

I feel like my music has become a lot of things. It's hard to label the evolution, but I like there to be an evolution. I just like to paint with all different kinds of colors.

Music has to change. I don't want to stay the same forever.

It's not enough to play the old songs; that feels like being your own covers band or something. It's a big release to do new stuff.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do, and then just go for it.

I don't ever try to make a song better than my last song. I just try to make it different from my last one.

I feel like bands should be growing, living, functioning entities and to crystallize a band into a single album, and for that to be a touchstone - I understand it from a fan's perspective but I also feel like it's a little bit misleading in terms of the way bands actually function.

If there's a song that stops meaning anything to me, then I'll quit playing it.

In a way, I pattern myself after all the bands I used to like as a kid. Every time they put out LPs, they had a whole new look and a new sound.

So it's not so much that I set out to do something different, it's just that the songs themselves require their own individual voice and attention.

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

You're always in a different headspace when you make each record, so hopefully they're all different. You just pick up things that you wish you hadn't done on the first one.

Music is always changing and the changes are unpredictable.

Songs go through cycles for me. And sometimes I lose my passion for some of them.

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.

Yes, our band will change and evolve, but we want to establish the reality of what this band truly sounds like.

I never left music, I just left the music scene.

You have to grow with the music.