Concert Preparation Quotes

There's such a currency to Led Zeppelin, or the members of Led Zeppelin. If I put it to you this way, on the run-up to the O2 concert, the only music that we played was music of Led Zeppelin - the past catalog stuff; that's what we played on the way towards shaping up the set list for that. But we played really, really well.

When preparing for a concert, I do lots of training. I work with a choreographer to create great moves and then I have to keep my voice strong with lessons.

Usually, I fly in the day before a concert so your voice can acclimate to the new environment.

The fact that Eddie Vedder likes to play 3 hour plus shows a night, I have to be ready for that.

When I do my concerts, you have got to think about everything else; so you have got to think about your gown, your hair, your body, and how you present yourself on stage.

We live for our concerts. We like a live appearance more than anything else about this business and it bothers us when we put so much into it and the critics bomb us.

We have a song called 'Skynyrd Nation.' It's just about what our fans are, what they do in getting ready for the show.

Once you've been on tour six, seven years, you get an idea of what works and what doesn't work universally. There will be some crowds that we just can't play a song, but we've got 90% of a show that we know is going to be a hit with the Lupe Fiasco fan. I think the catering has already been done.

I've definitely gotten to the point where we get to the venue, and people know that I'm in charge of the band.

It's a crazy world, so I meditate for 20 minutes. I also meditate for 20 minutes before a concert.

New Year's Eve, we're going to be doing a concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Symphony Hall. It makes me feel good, because of all the people they could have had, they wanted me! We do have to do a little work with the rhythm section.

I demand perfection in what I do, and I practice very hard before I give a concert-sometimes three to six hours a day.

For a long time, I couldn't actually deal with playing concerts; it was a totally alien concept to me, 'cause I was used to playing in clubs and dance halls.

Typically in Korea when I perform I have a full band, a ten-piece band, and that's a completely different monster in itself to prepare and rehearse.

To do more of a concert thing, it takes so much preparation. You don't just show up and wing it. You're putting countless hours in the studio, not just to write and produce stuff, but to come up with edits and special things for the show.

'Entertainment Tonight' would send me out to do interviews with musicians like Sting and Coldplay, and I was able to watch how they plan their shows. The late Jerry Garcia of Grateful Dead always had a game plan, but he also was flexible if he had to change something at the last minute.

Before I ever did a stage concert, I'd done hundreds of living-room concerts, which helped a lot.

I still get nervous about singing. I drink tea with honey and lemon before every concert. And I need to have scented candles in all of my hotel rooms.

At any Maroon 5 concert, you'll see a room backstage marked 'yoga.'

There might be two or three songs I'm trying out. I've been singing these songs (on the new album) in the studio, but I haven't really done them live. It's intimate to sing them in a studio. Now, I've got to be on a stage and be in front of a lot of people.

To maintain a consistency when people come to see the band takes a lot of work; it takes a lot of discipline. I go to the studio every day and sing and play. I never did that when I was, like, 30. I'd probably have a drink and walk on - and see what comes out. But now if there's ten albums' worth of material people are coming to hear some of, and they've paid money for a ticket, you become a different person when you go on and you want to give the best show you can. You want to be better at what you do.

Meanwhile someone is shining my head to get it dry to attach my top-hat to my head with toupee tape. I get into microphone and get back up into my dressing room for the rest of my costume. I get snapped into all these things and layers and bundled up. I walk downstairs to the pit. Someone hands me my baton (which lights up like a wand) and I watch the first three minutes of the show. Then I come up out of the pit and there I am.

I pluck with my fingernails. If I break a nail, I can't cancel a concert. So I can make a nail out of a ping-pong ball.

Before the show, there's about two or two and a half hours of meet and greets with radio stations, promoters, people who I need to see and thank and talk to to make sure they remember me. And then, I get - out of all that day of talking and smiling and shaking hands and getting photos, I get to sing for two hours.

I still get butterflies. It's because there's a certain level of responsibility you carry when doing a concert. You've got to sound at least as good as the record.