Rick Nielsen Quotes

All I have is my performance, I try to feed in the best of everything that I could possibly do into those 90 minutes and to make a live entertainment show out of it.

I feel my live shows are my music; everything blossoms from the live shows.

Unless the clients want, I don't like to have dancers for my shows. I prefer a rock show look and like performing with a live band.

Somewhere along the line, a concert became a variety show. It was no longer enough for four dudes to play together in front of some guitar amps. Costume changes, an army of dancers, and Broadway theatrics suddenly became standard for a 'concert.'

Live music is better.

I can go out raw with nothing, and my fans would still be happy, but I feel that I owe it to them to give them almost like a Broadway musical at this point in my life. I have to give them something more, so I do have to think of different ways to do it.

Music is a performance and needs the audience.

It wasn't just about flashing lights and pinball machines blowing up and things like that. It was about using encores, bringing back the good songs and using techniques that I knew about from rock performance.

I love Coldplay. The lights, and the sound quality They really play their instruments. Sometimes, during the show, they'll make a mistake and stop. I think they do it intentionally just to show you they're really playing it live.

I've always been one for show business. I like performing, and I used to get criticized for having production value. But now it's all that! People need to get what they pay for! Otherwise, just listen to recorded music.

If I were doing a real rock show, slapping the phone book in time to the music, grooving with the songs, then it would matter to know how I felt about what I was playing. You can't fake it in that situation. But I'm just counting them down as they appear on the chart, 1 through 40. What really matters is what I say between the songs.

A concert is not a live rendition of our album. It's a theatrica! event.

And I try to give the best bang for the buck. I love performing more than anything else.

Nothing beats a live performance. Nothing.

From the first time you can look in the paper and you accept that you're the entertainment for some people that night, it becomes so much more enjoyable to play live.

Fortunately any of the songs we've recorded can be extremely fulfilling to perform depending on the variety of circumstances that surround any given show.

Big productions, to me, are great - like, I love going to Vegas and seeing shows - but I think that sometimes it's distracting, especially when you are there to listen to the music.

There are a lot of singers who cannot sing to save their lives. We have to accept it, but thank God there is such a thing as live shows. It's only when people are faced with live shows that the world gets to know how good or how bad they are.

It always disappoints me when I go to a concert and they don't play my favorite song, or at least one of their biggest hits.

People have said I played some pretty amazing gigs in the seventies, but in all honesty, I probably played one good show in three.

When you see a band, you want to see characters.

There's nothing like performing for a live audience.

When you get the rush of live performing, it's hard to give that up.

Older people generally appreciate live music.

We've had the good fortune of performing to live music a few times in our career and it always creates a different dynamic.