Nick Mason Quotes

Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So it's like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that's really the only unique situation that's going to be left.

Recorded music is basically free now. I used to tour to promote a CD, but now I make a CD to promote a tour. I've moved on and live with the new reality, but I do get frustrated when people do dumb things.

I'm usually going to make a record, finish a record, start a record or start a tour or between tours.

I love the road. That's always been my goal. I've said that to many record labels. I want to make records. The road is my favorite. Some people hate the road, I love the road.

My father played with Air Supply, Yes, B.B. King and even Sheryl Crow when she first started out, so I've sort of been around the industry for a long time.

Being my own boss and working inside an industry that's not really an industry, I need to keep busy and keep working. The only way to make money in music - unless you're managing someone - is to tour, and even that depends on where you are at.

In the history of pop music, a lot of great records cost an enormous amount of money. There used to be a time where people that had means to experiment would do it, you know?

I know the history of the record business so well because I followed Billie Holiday into the record studios. It was so primitive compared to the sophisticated business today.

Traditionally the show must go on which is a stupid thing to say, but that in a nutshell is what's going on. We have a new record out; if we won't tour, the new record dies. It's reality - it's what business is nowadays. You just need to tour to sell your albums.

Traditionally, tours were a means of promoting a record. Today, the record promotes the tour.

Records are very powerful promotional tools to go out and be able to play on the road, but you do have to think about it as a way of sustaining itself at some point.

I achieved everything I wanted to achieve by being in the Rolling Stones and making records.

All I've ever wanted to do was play music and go on the road and make records.

As a rock fan, you read of the big labels and the multinationals and the big tours with road crews and semi-trailers full of gear, and playing stadiums. In the '90s, that's what we did.

I'm lucky that I enjoy touring as much as I do. I'm not going to make a living just making records.

In rock n' roll, we don't sell records at all like we used to. Yet the artist still has to pay to make records. So you've just got to get out on tour and be smarter about your merchandising.

A producer gets the whole vision done from top to bottom, to making the record to having the record delivered to the world. That's a producer.

I don't make as many records as other people do because I prefer the live side of it - and my records are so big that they keep me touring for years upon years and years.

But I can say that the business has changed drastically since I started at 8 years old. Everything from the way you tour to how you make a record and how you release the music.

I made, like, five records as Dirty Projectors before I got out of college. And then I put a band together when I got interested in going on tour around that time.

For us, if you're a rock band, there's no way around it. You have to tour. You have to tour a whole lot.

We love to make records, and we love to tour.

No one sells records anymore. It's all about touring. It's all greatest hits records and box sets. And even those don't sell. People just go online.

These days and times you can't do eclectic records. In the '60s you could, but not anymore.

How I measure success is getting to make another record and being able to the come back to the same town and play again cause you sold out the last time.