Rock Excess Quotes

Every time the mainstream media talk about progressive rock, they wheel out a clip of Rick Wakeman in a cape. For me, it's one of the most ambitious forms of music. The problem is that when it doesn't work, you end up with Emerson, Lake and Palmer doing symphonies with 60-piece orchestras and revolving pianos, which I think is ridiculous as well.

We made The Who look like church boys on Sunday. We done things only fools'd do.

I loved the music, but the excesses of rock n' roll never really appealed to me at all. I couldn't see the point of getting up in front of a lot of people when you weren't in control of your wits.

If you put a Van Halen album in your record collection, it will melt all the rest of your records.

The Stones were more dangerous than other bands of the Sixties. It looked like they had more fun than the Beatles - like they stayed up later.

Ozzy Osbourne and Motley Crue in New Orleans on Mardi Gras = bad idea!

Terry said he had this new kid and his wife didn't want to live in England. He wanted to tour. He hated being in the studio. Terry liked seeing various bars the world over and getting smashed out of his brain. He was a sort of latent Keith Moon.

It's a miracle that David Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop are actually still alive today, given how hard they lived.

I feel nowadays a lot of bands can be too overly produced. There's something about the leather pants and bare bodies and Axl Rose running back and forth on a stage and going crazy. I love all that.

We got touring with the Stones, and people were trying to keep up with Keith. He's like a human machine with a constitution of iron, and they all thought they could do the same.

It's not the '80s any more. We're not all riding around in limousines and snorting coke off of hookers' tits. We still have to keep working and touring. We're definitely still very much a working band. If we stopped doing this tomorrow, we'd have a little bit of cash to last us a couple of months, and then we'd have to go and get other jobs.