Joe Perry
If you get satisfaction out of playing music and entertaining people and it makes you feel right, then go for it.
Every time I get in front of an audience, I do the best I can. I really don't look at it like, you know, 'This is gonna be this crowd, or that crowd.' If anything, I think about the demographics only because of what songs will entertain more than others.
I've always felt you are only as good as your next album or next show. What you've done is done. When you get a gold record, you hang it on the wall, and then it's like, 'Yeah, next?'
The bottom line is fans just want to hear a good song. Some people will look underneath to see who wrote it, but they just want to hear a good song. And if they don't hear it, they're not going to buy it just because you wrote it.
I love to listen to the music that first inspired me - I get that fresh feeling back.
I've been into guns ever since I was a little kid, and the ones that fascinate me most are the black powder guns that people used back in the 17 and 1800s.
It's so important for people to pay attention to history and learn from it, because it's the only thing we've got that's going to help us figure out where we are going. Especially the way things are manipulated in the press today. You have to sort through so much stuff to figure out what is real and what is not. It gets harder every day.
The media plays up celebrity a lot, but it doesn't hold a candle to being a scientist. There's a lot to be said for what they all do, and are trying to accomplish.
I really didn't like 'Done With Mirrors.' I really didn't like 'Just Push Play.' Then there are other records I really think were good for their time, like 'Toys and Rocks.'
I have always been fascinated with guns. I grew up in America so granted, it is part of our heritage and it is written into the laws of how this country is run.Collection: Running
I don't need to speak...I play the guitar!Collection: Guitar
The Beatles did everything long before anyone else. They weren't afraid to try things and to experiment with a lot of sounds. In 200 years, when you look up 'rock and roll' in the dictionary, it'll have a picture of the Beatles next to it.Collection: Rocks
Rhythm and sex go together and that's where I come from as far as the music goes. Rag Doll and Love In An Elevator are such sexual songs that you put them on & the strippers go NUTS!Collection: Song
I know that some of the great painters and some of the great artists didn't even start to 'peak', as you say, till they were in their fifties and sixties. And God knows, history is full of artistic people that weren't even recognized till they were dead and gone.Collection: Artist
A band isn't a band unless they're playing together. Otherwise it's just five guys that are living off their royalty checks.Collection: Guy
Steven and I stood on the stage at the Boston Garden after the Stones had just played there and the stage was still up. We had been playing cards, maybe a high-school dance, to 400 or 500, maybe a thousand. We just stood on the stage and thought, 'Well,man,maybe someday.' In 4 years that was OUR stage.Collection: School
I know that the gift that God gave me isn't gonna just wither up and die unless I let it die, so it's a matter of me having the faith that it's gonna come out. Whether or not the public's gonna like it is another story. But I think as long as I keep changing and sticking to what I really love - and the same goes for Steven and the other guys in the band - then people are gonna like it.Collection: Thinking
You think it's all written, but it's not. There's always another way to twist those three chords around.Collection: Thinking
My chosen instrument is guitar and, fortunately, I'm able to muddle through that. I can play guitar to the point where I can express myself artistically.Collection: Guitar
I guess we all have a bad night now and then and really screw up. I listened to our earlier stuff and we screwed up a lot. But at least now that we are sober, when we screw up it's for real.Collection: Real
There was a time I thought I couldn't enjoy rock 'n' roll unless I had heroin in meCollection: Rocks
If you take your last album & try to copy it, then thats sure to hell the way to stagnation. And that makes me bored...and if I'm bored then the music is boring and so are the band!Collection: Bored
I'm glad that I never ended up killing myself, though I came close more times than I would like to admit.Collection: Killing
I think we're just a garage band that got lucky. It's the enthusiasm from the audience that keeps it going.Collection: Thinking
I never envisioned what I was doing as part of a career.Collection: Careers
There are guys in country music who are wizards on the guitar. If you're a country fan, you're used to it. But as a rock guitar player, you listen.Collection: Country
The great British blues guitarists of the Sixties - people like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Peter Green - could play like virtuosos, but they also understood the importance of energy and intensityCollection: Music
I don't want fans to think we're clean, upstanding American boys, but we are Americans, and we do stand up.Collection: Boys
Get good live and get a following because that's what people notice.Collection: People
I think that's really important, that kids get exposed to music as soon as they can - not necessarily to become musicians, but at least have an outlet. It's an art form that's easily accessible to young ears.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Song
You don't throw clothes away, because you know it's going to come back in fashion!Collection: Fashion
The Beatles just changed everything right across the board. They just had that right combination of clean-cut good looks - a cute band - but under that they had a real rock n roll thing going on.Collection: Cute
You can always pound out demos and send them to record companies, but most of the successful bands I've seen are the ones that can sustain themselves.Collection: Successful
A lot of people don't listen to the albums. They just listen to the singles.Collection: People
It's probably listening to country music that got me to start playing a lot cleaner, not as distorted.Collection: Country
The really pop country stuff can sound a little bland because they put in strings and horns and all of that.Collection: Country