You can look at someone and get to know their music and say, 'This is someone who I want to work with.'
Since his childhood, Bappa has observed me singing and practicing and is well aware of all sorts of recording and singing arrangements. I have a studio at my home, so whenever he needs my help I make sure I stand by him. I often sing for the tunes that he composes.
I think an album is all about the songs you've worked on and the journey it's taken to get there.
I like getting my own thoughts out right now, I have fans to solidify, so that's why I don't do tracks with too many younger rappers or newer artists. People may consider me to be a music snob or whatever, but I like to preserve what's mine and I also don't just do tracks to do tracks, I make every song with a purpose.
I don't really listen to contemporary R&B with an ear for hearing my influence. Music is a spirit unto itself, and all of us musicians influence each other all along the chain.
My brother is an excellent songwriter, and I play guitar and drums.
At 14, I was in my own little classic rock country band. Then, after high school, I started another band called Northern Comfort. That was based out of Chico, Calif.
I would join a band, learn from that band and be committed and passionate and bring my thing to the band. Then, when I felt like we were going to repeat ourselves, and I needed to learn more, I would go somewhere else.
If my peers had a significant impact on my music, my music would probably be a lot more popular.
Widespread Panic discovered a couple of my songs and started doin' 'em on the gigs. They'd take a song and expand it and everybody plays a long time and people really like that. But I made my living as a songwriter so I try to get to singin' and get it over with.
I could never say Rza's trash. But he didn't come with the right formula on '8 Diagrams.' I think 'Cuban Linx 2' will have the Clan back where they need to be, but then it's up for the Clan to be back where they need to be, too. 'Cos it ain't just the album, you know what I mean? It's everything.
Joe Walsh is somebody who... he's a writer, obviously, and he's a singer-songwriter, whatever, but at the end of the day, when it comes to the Eagles, he's there to play guitar, and he's there to supply whatever is needed for that band, and that is what I feel with Metallica.
When Sonic Youth wrote music, we would rehearse for months before anybody heard anything.
A couple of days working with Joe Jonas, I thought, 'This guy is a slayer of a singer; he's really funny, goofy, and sexy. We need to write that.' And that led to 'Cake By The Ocean.'
I was living and working with adult men who were playing a real art form. And I had been playing blues all my life. As soon as I formed my first band, we played Jimmy Reed stuff. So it wasn't like I was a white kid who was learning the blues from B.B. King records.
I have been playing acoustic music for a very long time, and it's something that I am very comfortable doing, so if I made a record, it would probably be a mixture of that and some other things that I'm interested in.
I'm not really comfortable with being on songs with cats I don't really know.
Of course, Paul McCartney's sound is different from mine, but it's the way you hear things, really.
Creating a record on my own and deciding who plays and how the songs were structured, it was fun to do.
The band's a really close-knit family. We've got fantastically good friendships and relationships that have developed after all these years.
It's hard to beat the visceral high of playing live and creating something spontaneous.
I wrote a song with Kara DioGuardi called 'What If,' and it's a really beautiful song. It's kind of like a rock ballad. There's a lot of guitars and drums in it.
Luckily, I'm in a band with two other guys who really pull their own weight and have the skills and abilities to compensate for my weaknesses.
I play guitar all the time, and I'm constantly thinking of songs... Every time I pick up a guitar, I come up with different riffs, all different bands I've been in. Sometimes there is a song or riff that could only belong with Slipknot, and I just can't use it for anything else, regardless of whatever happened.
My part in AC/DC is just adding the color on top.
