A. J. McLean Quotes

When we toured... I was hungry to take out people like Jeff Beck in front of us; Fleetwood Mac, just before they hit; Heart, just before they hit.

I love watching live music. It's one of the reasons I love living in Austin, Texas, because there is so much live music.

A lot of bands have the enthusiasm kicked out of them by playing really dreary pub venues that just churn bands through.

Playing live is a lost art, and you don't see a lot of bands that go out and play the way the older bands do. It's a celebration, and a lot of people treat it like a commercial or a distraction.

The pop world has really opened its doors.

I think if you retire from touring then people think you are retired.

I enjoyed the two years I was with Clannad. I enjoyed touring. We toured a lot in Europe.

What the Who is all about is exactly that and it always has been. If it exists today for this concert, it's in response again to a function which is happening out there on the street.

The focus is on singer/songwriters now rather than huge shows. I mean, of course there's always a place for that too.

Touring helped me understand where I needed to be better in my music.

The Eagles and the Captain and Tennille ruled the airwaves, and we were the answer to it.

I'd definitely love to play in Nashville again. That would be really good.

We've been gone five years and the best they could come up with was boy bands?

It was all about music, about getting your friends to come and see you play. I don't see that same intimacy happening very much today.

Watch MTV and you can see what the music scene is like in England. The Spice Girls? Not a lot of creativity in the commercial area. There are still great musicians in England, but not a lot being heard that much.

Any vehicle that conveys great songs and the ability to perform them, whether it's 'N Sync or the Backstreet Boys or One Direction, is all good.

I like The Four Freshmen, anything with good harmonies, some Beach Boys. I like the girl groups as well, like The Dixie Cups and all that.

I am lucky to live in Austin, so I can enjoy the live music.

It's like Liverpool. Everybody went for the music. All the young musicians seemed to gravitate to Asbury Park.

Definitely, when you get into something where bands are playing for 30,000 people, it's not like the post-punk, U.S. independent scene.

For any performer who's coming up, if they really want to test their psychology and how they handle themselves on stage, then coming to the U.K. as a whole is a wonderful place for that.

After years of touring you experience music festivals that are mostly the same - where you copy and paste the same experience into a muddy field in California or a muddy field in England.

When we tour, there's always this unique quality to every town you visit... Touring, you get a sense of a collective identity for different cities. That's one of the things I love about my job.

Just being a singer in Nashville is hard because everyone does music here, and so many people do it really well. But then, the fact that I do this alternative kind of pop music, dreampop... It's like I'm the lone unicorn roaming around this town.

I had a few DJs in my neighbourhood that would play music in the streets. There was no hip-hop yet; there were just DJs that were playing disco, funk, and pop music, and we would gather round, go to the parks, and dance and enjoy ourselves.