Musician Burnout Quotes

The reality is that my style of drumming is largely an athletic undertaking, and it does not pain me to realize that, like all athletes, there comes a time to... take yourself out of the game.

Yeah, I think we have to. If we want our shows to be - if we want the quality of the shows to be good, and we want the energy to be high, and if we want to be in good enough physical shape to do them, and not exhaust ourselves on the road, and not get stale, we have to pace.

People forget that keeping a band together is hard; man, it's really hard. All the cliches apply about living in each other's pockets; of it being a relationship, a marriage, a family.

When I'm not playing music, certainly the last thing I want to do is listen to music!

I'm so far removed from live playing any more.

The Blossoms had gotten so we were working seven days a week, three or four sessions a day, which was literally killing us, physically. With the instruments that the musicians play, they can do that, but not with us using our voices.

I think the third record is the hardest one.

I just hope people don't get sick of us. I'm sick of us and I'm in Destiny's Child.

Sometimes not playing music for a day is much more beneficial than playing every day for ten hours.

A band requires so much rehearsal and travel logistics. I didn't mind it when I was younger, but there's not much motivation for me to do it now.

Every year that goes by, I lose that much more motivation to play rock.

Touring is a rough thing. You don't have any time to look around or stop and think if what you're doing is making you happy. The more you tour, the better the band gets, and you get caught up in a lot more things than just traveling.

Basically, 2011 was the hardest year on the road for me because I did a spring tour and a fall tour plus nine weeks in the summer, and I was pretty worse for wear by the time I got home in December. I know I was only 34, but that was a tough lap.

I think that's the graveyard of musicians, playing cabaret. I think I'd rather be dead than work in cabaret. It's just so depressing.

My life used to be record, tour, record, tour. You can never say no as a freelance musician. I was on the road 200 days a year.

Rock bands are not exactly magnets of functional people.

There was one tour where I thought, "If I can't get this feeling back of being excited to be on the stage, then I will quit." Because I have friends who have dialed it in and I watch their concerts and shake my head. I'm sure the audience can tell, too.

You spend more time with your fellow band members than your girlfriend or wife, and you end up at each other's throats. It happens to all bands.

Albums take a lot out of you.

I've probably gone a month or two without playing guitar, just because I've gotten so burnt on it touring all year or whatever.

One of the things I've heard musicians say that's true is, 'I would play for free. I would play music forever, but you have to pay me to travel.' I know we're always going to make music. The traveling part - that is the most wear and tear on any human.

As you get up in your thirties, the van touring is not a possibility anymore. We can't all be Mike Watt.

When you're in the same band as somebody, you're seeing them almost more than 24 hours a day. You start to see an awful lot of the bad side 'cause touring is no easy thing.