Steve Harris Quotes

We never do the same set twice... We play for at least two and a half hours, sometimes longer, so there's a lot of songs from all the records. And we know there's a stable we as fans would want to hear, so we always give them, then we change up a bunch of songs and throw in a couple new ones.

We'll go out and we'll be playing in front of 15,000 people and say, 'Hey, we're going to do three new songs from something we just recorded' and 5,000 people get up and go get a hot dog and a beer and they don't come back until they hear the opening strings of 'The Joker' or 'Fly Like an Eagle.'

I was always against starting the show with new material because the fans don't know it. They just look at you, and it's not explosive.

I hate it when bands do that; they're so proud of their new album, they have to play all of it and a couple of golden oldies.

If I go see a band, and they play, like, zero from any of their old albums, I'm very happy about that. I do not want to see the bands of my youth playing the songs of my youth. I hate that.

When I tour with the new album, I still do the classics, and I love the atmosphere it creates with the whole audience singing along.

I always thought I was doing something special with 'Lost Girl.' How that would be reflected or responded to by the fans, I hadn't really considered. That they are so loyal is amazing. We have such lovely fans.

It's been a long time since we've been out there playing new material, and we have really enjoyed that. Of course we still enjoy playing the Yes standards as well, but it's great to have a bit of a challenge and pull off new material.

I still love to do the old songs. I know some people don't.

You go to any Jay-Z concert, and he plays his hits. Comedians don't have hits. You have to have a whole brand-new hour. You have no hits to rely on. It's the hardest thing.

That person who's going to a concert for a nostalgic reason, we're not really going to placate. We still play three or four hits every night. Now, we don't play them like the record. We try to find new ways to do it.

It's not a bad problem to have because a lot of classic acts are known for one or two songs and in their show they basically hold those songs off until the end and you sit through an hour or so of lesser known material but in our case most of the songs are well known.

Whenever I sing 'Total Eclipse of the Heart,' the way people sing along with me still excites me. It's one of the songs that audiences know all the lyrics to, and they sing along with me, and it makes me so happy. People also know my songs 'Holding out for a Hero' and 'Lost in France,' and this gives me so much joy on stage.

It's been really interesting watching people's reactions to the new music, to the old music and also watching how modern young people will be standing in front of something going on like live music, and there's a camera in front of their face.

When you put an album out, you can't do any material from the album if people are paying to see you.

I really like the old stuff that I cut my musical teeth on, and I loved it when the industry was just like that, without really a genre. Today, country radio's more aimed at a demographic than a genre. It just softens everything.

I like revisiting my early work, and people like to hear it. I don't make people suffer through any experimentation or new material. When I go see an artist, I want to hear the songs that drew me to them, so I do the same.

People ask me if I ever get sick of playing 'Daydream Believer' or whatever. But I don't look at it that way. Do they ask if Tony Bennett is tired of 'I Left My Heart in San Francisco?'

A lot of times, that's hard to capture: what you sound like in person versus what you sound like on record. If I had total control, I would do a lot of the old songs - not only my songs but Sam Cooke songs, Luther Vandross, melody songs. That's what I would really do if I had an opportunity to do a record.

There are not so many songs written about love today like there were in the past. It's all changed, but that's why my songs still last as big favorites today.

I can play whatever I want and play whatever the fans want to hear. I don't have to be like a salesperson up there talking about my CD through the whole show.

On our Web site, we have people complaining about us not playing new stuff. But there's so many classic Lynyrd Skynyrd songs, you can't go out and just do a bunch of new things.

My view is that the great songwriting happened between 1920 and 1960. We're all, in our different ways, descended from the great songwriters of that era.

I always use the Rolling Stones as the whipping boy for this, but they still play old songs as 90% of their set, and we would die if that were the case.

When we first signed to Loud, we had a 20-song demo. So all of those songs we wanted to put on the album. But we started making new ones, and through process of elimination, we wanted all the new ones. We didn't like the old ones no more.