Brian Setzer Quotes

I put a metronome up to all the songs, and I tried to really keep it true to the original tempos.

With the Stray Cats at least, we really took the music somewhere else. First, we wrote our own songs. That's a real weak point in modern classics if you do rockabilly or blues.

To me, rockabilly music paralleled punk's energy and feeling, but the players were much better.

The biggest challenge for me was Get Rhythm. I don't know why.

I got cat class and I got cat style

Don't be afraid to take liberties with this music. Try and put some of yourself into it.

,,, all around it would have to be Eddie Cochran, because it wasn't just music with him; it was his guitar playing, his look, his singing, I'd say that, all things considered, he's probably my favorite "cat" of all time

If you listen to everybody's opinions, I mean, I always say I'd be digging a ditch on the side of the road now if I had listened to what everybody told me what to do. You know, you have to follow your heart, you have to.

I didn't want to take the guitar solos down note-for-note, but more or less use them as a map, and keep all the hooks from the guitar playing, and let myself come through.

There's a fine line between pleasure and pain. Love me like a ball and chain.

... so much of what we do now started in 1954 at Sun Records in Memphis Tennessee ... those guys were inventing that stuff (Rock & Roll) ... you can really tell on some tracks ... they were actually afraid at times of what they were playing. But Rock & Roll definitely didn't come before that time; it started right there

Veteran performers are dying off, and new acts simply aren't emerging on the national scene.

To keep creating something with this type of music, you have to take it out of the box.

Rock & Roll is the physical thing that just comes out of you .. the other stuff you have to sit down and learn .. once you learn scales and chord progressions, you can make up your own versions

Normally, you go into the recording studio, make a record and then take it on the road and you think... wow... I could have done THIS to it, or something.

McCartney! Haven't met him and haven't played with him. I would LOVE to. He needs to make a kick-ass rockabilly record.

I'm not God's gift to rockabilly. There's great players out there, and some of them deserve a lot more than they've gotten.

Since the big band started I'm just always swamped with movies and things. It certainly pays the bills and it's very satisfying, because I get to write all these big charts and all this crazy music.

I basically sat down for a month, with all the Sun stuff I could find and just picked out my favorites. I didn't think that they were indicative of '54 to '57, although I tried to stay within that period.

I can't tell you how many people have asked me to show them Stray Cat Strut and that little diminished run on the C. I guess my brain is wired backwards. I don't know what possessed me to do that, but I did.

It's not about how loud you turn the amp up. That's not what makes it sound big. What makes it sound big is fooling around with different delays and reverb settings.

It's really funny, I think to myself... I've got my same guitar and amp, it's just a bigger room now! Some things don't change.

I mean, what 16-year-old is going to listen to Doc Watson?

You had to pick something like Blue Suede Shoes because it's the flagship of the Sun label, but then I wanted to dig down and find something like Rakin' and Scrapin'.

Mark Winchester has left the band. He's decided that he's tired of the road and just wants to concentrate on his career in Nashville. I don't blame him at all. He'll certainly be missed.