Gene Ween Quotes

I've been gearing up for this future of writing a lot of new music by digging into my favorite old stuff, and twisting it around and highlighting the things I really love.

I guess I'm attracted to people who are singing about love or life, and they have a particular passion that I can connect with.

My favorite Extreme records were the last two. I can't listen to the first one.

In the range of music that we play - roughly 300 years' worth-there really are more similarities than differences.

Gamma was a logical progression after doing the Open Fire record.

Great musicians, you don't just hear them, you feel them. When I listen to Randy Rhoads, I feel every note. I learned a lot from him.

I guess I see 'Goo' half as a really New York record because I think there are a lot of really particular New York references on it, but I also see it, for us, as the first of our records that really opened up to the larger world around us.

Anyone that I've ever worked with, it's not like I just meet you or someone throws us together for the sole purpose of coming up with a song that's gonna be a hit. I have to have some sort of relationship, or we had to have interacted on some other sort of level and that's when it feels most natural.

The reason 'Fireball' is my favorite album of that period is that without 'Fireball,' we would never have been able to make 'Machine Head.'

Most of the time I don't even talk about any direct lineage of songs, because I feel like it just chains them down into my own consciousness, and the whole fun of them is being able to live in others' consciousness.

Human After All was the music we wanted to make at the time we did it. We have always strongly felt there was a logical connection between our three albums, and it 's great to see that people seem to realize that when they listen now to the live show.

There's so much music out there, and so many different styles that I've been influenced by, so each album reflects some of that knowledge or influence that I've had.

I can't imagine writing if I didn't have a reader. Any more than an actor can imagine acting without an audience.

When you play the bars, you pay your dues. It does matter that you know those things [songs]. And the great thing for me, too, is that I draw on that stuff as influences. It's also stuff that you put in the tank that you pull from to make records.

When I was done with the movie [Ordinary World], I felt really compelled to start working on another album. Little did I know, they were going to come out back to back.

Like many musicians, it's my roots in music, playing cover songs. I've done probably a lot more covers than the average person who does what I do, but I'm very proud of it, and I do feel like I really bring a lot artistically to these covers.

All the songs on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot are the encapsulation of heterosexual love. I have different records for gay sex.

The songs started as a soundscapes, and then came the words and music; each song took at least a year to make.

I cut my teeth playing rock songs on the accordion when I was a teenager and my friends always thought that was extremely amusing. I think that was the genesis of my polka medleys, because every rock song I played on the accordion just sounded like a polka and my friends thought it was funny. So that was a joke that I continue up to this very day.

I miss you so much your absence causes me, at times, accute pain. I don't mean sexually. I mean in connection with my writing.

When people ask that question, it's very hard to nail down a formula or a circumstance that I always write in, but I definitely do believe that there have been moments, musically, when I have channeled something, you know?

I know we play a part in the story of progressive music, but for us those influences are the real fathers, the ones that we were interested in.

Each album comes from definitely a different period in the evolution of each of us individually as creators and the role that we take in life. The external stimuli changed... so the songs are full of lots of different meanings.

To me, a perfect album talks about the hard stuff and the fun and caring stuff.

I think it's important that all 50 years of rock 'n' roll live in the same place, because it's all connected.