Taylor Goldsmith Quotes

You write a song; you know what you want it to sound like. With a band like ours, it's more about the collective. It's important everyone feels expressed and represented.

The Sekrets record is very much me, and Dan's Emergency Room is very much him. And then Alkaline Trio is very much ours.

A lot of the songs are written on piano or guitar, so I contribute, and I have done so since the beginning. So it's been good to be involved completely musically as well.

When I'm sick of myself, and when I don't know what to say as a solo artist, I can write a song for a movie. When I don't know where to turn musically, being in a band - Rilo Kiley or Jenny & Johnny - the collaborative nature is really exciting.

If I write for myself, I write a song and I bring in the musicians that are best suited to play it. There's a freedom there.

I used to be opposed to collaboration, and that's probably why the music in the past wasn't as good. Writing with other people, especially the great writers that I've had the privilege to write with, it activates something in your mind that you wouldn't use alone.

The Eagles are four very alpha personalities. We've all done solo work, and we've all played with very good musicians, but when the four of us get together, it becomes something that's much bigger than any one of us.

When you have four guys in a room writing songs, it different. It's great - that's what makes a band a band. Audioslave was great.

I play guitar all the time, and I'm constantly thinking of songs... Every time I pick up a guitar, I come up with different riffs, all different bands I've been in. Sometimes there is a song or riff that could only belong with Slipknot, and I just can't use it for anything else, regardless of whatever happened.

With Mr. Bungle, I'd lay down a really rough demo of my vocals and then play them for the guys without telling them what I was saying. Our drummer at the time had the coolest takes on what he thought I was saying, so I'd ask him to write out what he thought the lyrics were.

In our band, every member has input, but me and Steve do the majority of the writing. We start the songs, the rest of the band help us finish it.

We do what we want to do. We write songs. We try not to repeat ourselves too much. We have our own sound and our own way of doing things. Up until now it has always been enjoyable. None of the members have ever got to the point where they don't want to be involved in it ... It's not entirely possible for me to stand back and look at the Rolling Stones because being a part of it you can't. I wish that I could just sit in the audience for one night and see the show. Everyone in the band has said that at some point. But then you wouldn't be seeing the whole band. And that's the problem with that.

To outsiders it probably seems like splitting hairs, but to me, Bright Eyes is a simply the collaboration between myself and Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott. What you hear is definitely the sum of all our ideas and represents all three of us. But I still write the songs myself.

For me it's also - the music is equally as important. I mean I think as somebody who writes music, there just has to sort of be the marriage between both.

There's no leader of this band, and there never will be. That's the key. You can't control how the public perceives you-people see rock'n'roll bands as the guitar player and the singer.

In Mudcrutch we all wrote songs, and when it got to the focus on Tom and the Heartbreakers, I kept writing songs, but it wasn't anything that was up the Heartbreakers tree, I didn't think - and I don't think they did, either. So I kept writing songs for the hell of it, but I didn't want to make a record just for the sake of making a record.

Most people say, 'Well, Earl, you sing the blues,' or however they want to categorize it. I just sing songs.

I don't sit down to write a song, per se.

When you're in a band and there's five of you, you have to accommodate five people in every song.

It's different for every song. But for 'Say Something,' I think it was Chad who had an idea on guitar, and I had an idea on piano for different songs, and we just married them together. We bounce things off each other constantly and kind of massage all these ideas into a three and a half minute pop song.

Dot Hacker, to me, sounds like a collection of all my tastes. I hear four people trying to fill up as much space as they can.

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do, and then just go for it.

To me, music shouldn't be ego-driven. When you go out on stage and play songs, it is. But when you're sitting in a room, writing songs, it's a completely different process. It's a completely different place. It's a creative place, a musical place. It has nothing to do with who likes what.

But it can be hard to experiment when you're in a band.

My approach is to be part of a band that makes music, not hit songs.