For me, the original Guns N' Roses is the embodiment of a certain kind of chemistry that really couldn't be duplicated.
When everything is together - the band, me, the audience, it's boss! It's just like magic.
Having my son on drums has made a huge difference. I can't stress this strongly enough, in terms of the groove space and style that Joachim gave me to instinctively play what I felt in a more free way, rather than feeling constricted. That's true on record and on stage.
I feel it's quite important to have a band but what's more vital is to be friends with the members of the band. If there's not a bond there, you won't be able to jam. Apart from that, it's also vital to have the same vibe.
But it's always really difficult to find someone that has the qualities to be a great accompanist.
When you're in a band it's a 24/7 thing. If you don't get on or like each other things will fall apart very quickly, which is what it seems happened with Fifth Harmony.
You can't do seven successful albums and just hate each other. Our yin and yang, and night and day, is what made us great when we went into the studio.
It was great being together as a band, but much more difficult being brothers than it was being in a band.
To me, the secret of Eddie Van Halen was Alex Van Halen, because the way Alex played was so loose and the way the two of them locked together… Those two are connected so thoroughly they might as well be one person.
I'm used to coming up with a lot of parts. And I don't have to do that so much [with Divine Fits]. This is the kind of band I've always wanted to be in because we never set up any aesthetic rules when we started it. We just wrote and edited, and it ended up sounding like Divine Fits.
I love playing with Jeff. That's something I never really say in the press, but he's my favorite bass player. I've played right next to him for 10 years.
Joining a band without ever having really met the people before, you just want to be musically powerful.
I think one of the most valuable things Aerosmith has is the energy we produce when we all play together.
Common and I have a long history of making great music together.
I don't care if it's Dr. Dre or Dr. Luke or Brian Eno. When you're in a studio and making music together, it becomes pretty apparent if you see eye to eye.
Great music seems to come from a lot of angst, and that angst is from great musicians getting together with intense chemistry. When that chemistry isn't there, people tend not to write great music.
I have always needed other musicians to bounce off.
There's something about live players that you cannot get with machines: With live musicians, you can strike a groove, you can feed off each other... And, even though somebody might make a slight mistake, it's all real!
Rick Rubin was able to do things that Dave Fortman could never do. I'm not trying to take anything away from Dave Fortman as a producer. He's extremely talented. He wasn't able to get nine people together on the same page and, to me, that's the most important thing in making a Slipknot record.
I really liked them, not just Syd, but all of them. Roger was very important, I thought, his contribution. And so was Rick's organ playing. It was a good band. It became something else completely, obviously.
I think it was probably down to the fact that we weren't together personally as a band. We weren't pulling in the same direction. I always feel if you're having a good time in the studio it actually comes across on the tape and that was a bit of a miserable album for us.
The Rascals are something else. They're up there with the Beatles, and Stones and Byrds. That level of musicality. They have a real chemistry. It is like magic.
That's the one part where being brothers makes a difference. It's just instinct. That's the charm of what the Everly Brothers are: two guys singing as one.
I think music naturally wants to be played with more than one person. There's a surprise element, and you don't know what it will be, and it's up to that other person's energy to help create this third thing.
Being a three piece, maybe it's easier. You only have two other guys, musically, and everything else to contend with and work with.
