When I'm recording a song, I wake up and I'm thinking about it. I go to sleep and I'm thinking about it.
I care about the records I make and I love writing songs and some songs are really dear to me and they mean something. But the memory of making the records and the activities surrounding the records, the people involved in them is actually a bigger thing to me.
Our goal is to write memorable songs. We're not there yet, but we're getting closer. Each time we sit down to write, we have hopes of coming up with something that will be remembered forever. That's our dream.
I've done a lot of movies that don't have any music in them, and I've always sort of had a kind of wary attitude about music because it can be so manipulative, and also because with pop music, I feel like everybody kind of has their own relationship to songs.
That was an idea of the record company, and also that was my first album after MCA and we wanted to come back with a strong album that would be noticed. If we put the vocals by very talented people and very meaningful songs, then the vocals would be a platform so that I could be noticed again. All of the MCA albums were just loaded with problems -- you know, the right musicians, the engineers. The record company would say 'You have to make music for black radio, you can't do what you have been doing with The Crusaders.' Everybody was telling me that was over, finished, done.
I have seen more bad songs make it because of MTV than good ones that haven't.
Berry's On Top is probably my favorite record of all time; it defines rock and roll. A lot of people have done Chuck Berry songs, but to get that feel is really hard. It's the rock and roll thing-the push-pull and the rhythm of it.
I think that... the age of just slapping songs into movies, that's done.
Over the years, when you're in a band with a catalog like Aerosmith's, you accumulate a lot of instruments to duplicate those songs.
Sometimes when a record's done, I'm satisfied and I won't listen back to it for a while 'cause I'm usually pretty tired of the songs. Then I've got to learn them again to play them live, and sometimes it takes a while to realise it's a really good record.
I think it says wonders about people that can write an entire album, and put out an entire album of great songs. I mean, the Brad Paisley's, Alan Jackson especially, even Taylor Swift - those people can really pen great stuff.
I recorded the song 'Believers' because I feel the song has a strong and much needed message. We all need encouragement and something to believe in.
When you find great songs, and somehow you get a spark in a little way, it can become brand new.
I don't think there's anything wrong with singing a song and having fun with it.
Music is also supposed to be fun. On this record, (titled 'III'), I really had the desire again to jump back into some good-time, fun-loving songs.
Martin Noakes is a British conspiracy theorist who also happens to be maybe the best songwriter in the world, in my opinion. His songs are beautiful. They're crazy. That 9/11 song... no song has ever gotten into my head more. And it's inappropriate. You can't just like walk around singing about "jet fuel doesn't melt steel."
When you first start a band all you think about and spend your time doing is writing songs, play shows, in the simplest way and the simplest formation of the band. It's about the gear, and that guitar that one day you will buy. It's a beautiful time. I'm grateful for having that time. Then life flips upside down, all of a sudden you are strapped to a rocket ship, you get a hit, then it is tough to keep grounded.
Happened to be the first time we played the song live, but I absolutely for the life of me could not find the key singing and had to stop the band to find it.
We put on certain music when we're going to a party, right? You have that playlist of songs that you listen to before you get pumped up to go out.
People try to be more edgy, or write about that first explosive meeting between two people in a club, but not so much the long-term issues; I don't know how to write a song about teenage heartbreak anymore.
The chemistry of making the songs is often about being inspired by each other and responding intuitively.
There were incredibly few rock songs making it out to the airwaves until the '80s came along.
Well, over the years, I've developed a stable of songs of which I'm known for and never get tired of singing.
I love songs that have a rocking and grooving feeling.
Flower was a good metaphor for growth. The song is obviously about sexual responsibility, so that was the main metaphor. Also, it's like knowing who someone has been and remembering and appreciating that, but really appreciating what they are now even more.
