Being in Motley Crue really made me value friends and family.
When we were starting out as a band in New York, we played a concert at a small club early on and asked Lady Gaga to open for us. We were big fans, and she had the same kind of approach to music as we did: not taking everything so seriously and just having fun.
I just want to play music with a band, live.
Looking back, we had the hard time, but the privilege, of actually coming up playing biker bars and little bitty college bars.
One thing about being in Metallica is I've always felt challenged.
When I was 19, I joined a rock band, and that's when I began to say, 'Okay, this is something that I could take seriously.' When I came to Minneapolis, it just refined everything.
I think it'd be fun to tour with Kiss just because Kiss is the reason I got into playing in a band.
I enjoyed the idea of going and playing live. My beef was always with Wings that we never played live enough.
Later in high school, I met Hillel Slovak, who was the original guitar player of the Chili Peppers, and we became really close. We had a band, and we didn't like the bass player, so I started playing bass, and I got a bass two weeks later.
When I was in a band after high school and in college, I didn't even play the guitar. I played the bass because I couldn't play lead, and I didn't have the gear.
The Nazz survived for 18 months - that was my first taste of fame on some level and of the overall experience of being in a band. There are good and bad aspects, and I got to taste some of both, and, well, it's not as much fun as what you see in 'A Hard Day's Night,' let me just say that.
I got a lot of influence from my father, honestly. He'd take me in his car. I'd hear Carlos Santana. I'd hear Queen. I'd hear all these Turkish people, like, bands that he grew up listening to. He was in a band as well.
I grew up singing in Kansas. My dad had a band when I was growing up. So I sang in church and school and started singing with his band when I was seven. So I've been singing all my life.
I was in Redwood for almost six years. It was an acoustic trio that I still think was the best band I've ever been a part of. We do have a double CD of the Redwood stuff available called 'Lost But Not Really.' I'm very proud of the old Redwood stuff.
When I was a kid I never learned to play. I actually got in bands through watching people play and copying them.
Everyone in the group sang when I joined them. That was one of the problems with L.T.D.: there was no focal point. It took until 1976, or about six or seven years, before I was put into the spotlight as a vocalist. That's when I recorded 'Love Ballad,' and it became a hit for the group.
In high school no guys wanted to be in a band with me unless I was going to play bass or play grindcore or be in a scream-o band, so it was fun to finally have that experience of having my songs backed by a drummer and a bassist who were just as excited about it as I was.
It was great being together as a band, but much more difficult being brothers than it was being in a band.
When I was still in the Yardbirds, our producer, Mickie Most, would always try to get us to record all these horrible songs. During one session, we recorded 'Ten Little Indians,' an extremely silly song that featured a truly awful brass arrangement.
When I joined the band I didn't know any of the tunes, and when I left the band I didn't know any of the tunes!
After I left D.C. to join Black Flag, I felt I was in a band.
When I was in Van Halen I was hitting notes that were out of my range. I never went for those registers before until Eddie pulled it out of me.
We started the band when I was about 19 or 20. At that age, it would have been kind of hard to imagine a lot of the stuff that I've written. We were playing garage rock. I wanted to dash out three chords and scream. But if you do that for 20 years, what's the point?
Being in Nirvana was amazing an experience that will never happen again for me. And I look on them as some of the best and worst times of my life.
Being in bands and plugging away with not many opportunities and no money for many years really shaped me and taught me about work ethic.
