What we feel most comfortable doing is playing loud, screaming rock songs.
I just take rock songs and mix it with hip-hop and a little bit of R&B.
There were incredibly few rock songs making it out to the airwaves until the '80s came along.
The bands that wrote the big, heroic rock songs - I really wanted to make a record like that.
They're great songs. How many bands wouldn't like to have a 'Freebird' or 'Sweet Home Alabama' to play every night?
The Who always play 'I Can't Explain'; and we'll always play 'Wonderwall'. People ask us if we get bored of it. You can't get bored of 15,000 people shouting for 'Wonderwall'. That's better than drugs. You get a hard-on when you hear that.
With rock, you can write about anything. There are rock songs I still don't know what they're singing about, but you want to get up and dance.
The selections on 'Daily Practice' are all what I consider standard rock songs that have been absolutely essential to keeping me alive.
I don't know many artists who've managed to go a career without bringing these things up. Saying the word 'God,' 'Jesus' - it happens in a million rock songs.
I knew the words to 25 rock songs, so I got in the group. Long Tall Sally and Tutti-Frutti, that got me in. That was my audition.
I like songs that make me feel tough. Like 'Back in Black.' You want to hear it again and get in a fight.
When the second album came out, everybody gravitated immediately to the three and a half minute rock tunes and ignored the ballads. They thought all the Raspberries were was players of high-energy rock songs.
I like all the obnoxious Eagles stuff that just drives people crazy. I love 'Life In The Fast Lane' and 'Hotel California.'
I cut my teeth playing rock songs on the accordion when I was a teenager and my friends always thought that was extremely amusing. I think that was the genesis of my polka medleys, because every rock song I played on the accordion just sounded like a polka and my friends thought it was funny. So that was a joke that I continue up to this very day.
Honest, I listen to classical mostly. It keeps my mind fresh to write rock songs.
If you have a good riff with a vocal as well, then it becomes a devastating song. That's why people love riff-rock: it's the ultimate air guitar music.
I always wrote ballads, and I always wrote rockers.
The reason we did 'Land of a Thousand Dances' and 'Gloria' on 'Horses' was because I liked repetitious, three-chord rock songs, but I didn't understand that I could write my own. I didn't realize that you could use those chords a million times.
