I listen to somebody like Shawn Lane, and unfortunately he is no longer with us, but I hear him playing and I am like, 'That is just absolutely ridiculous.'
I don't think any of the early Romantic composers knew how to write for the piano... The music of that era is full of empty theatrical gestures, full of exhibitionism, and it has a worldly, hedonistic quality that simply turns me off.
The vocal arrangements are a big part of the formula for a Bad Religion song - layered harmonies and background vocals. So when I start to describe the elements of Bad Religion's sound, it starts to sound like a Christmas choir.
When you do a lyric for 'April in Paris,' those who have heard it before can hear it in a different way now. It can add perspective to a great piece of music that does not have a lyric and may be inaccessible to lot of ears because people don't deal with complex music very well.
The simplest beats, on what rock music or any music has been formed on, can be the toughest beats to execute and perform, because it's really easy to not respect a simple 4/4 beat, because people always want to play fast.
Everything can't be a postage-stamp-sized project. Everything can't be a chamber piece. Musicals aren't even meant to be that, or identified with it... It's none of it simple.
I don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions?
Our live set's become increasingly complex recently; we've been doing stuff that's been vastly too much information for most people to deal with and I think it's quite interesting watching how people behave in those situations, under those circumstances.
Fear is one of those really primal emotions which you don't want to have incredibly exciting modulations and complex harmonies and all that kind of stuff.
On first listening, Joni Mitchell's 'Court And Spark,' the first truly great pop album of 1974, sounds surprisingly light; by the third or fourth listening, it reveals its underlying tensions.
Jazz is one of the least learnable art forms.
See, we started out with a foundation of blues. But then we added people like Miles Davis and John Coltrane to the mix and gave rock n' roll a much more complex structure. It made it possible to play more than three chords.
Naturally, underground music often gravitates toward experimentation and the abstract. That's understandable, and more often than not, it feels great to dive into a difficult album and swim a few laps.
However, very recently I have come to an understanding that complex music is not necessarily pleasant.
White rhythm is waltzes, marches, and the polka. In Africa, rhythm is used for a celebratory groove, but white rhythm doesn't have such an enormous vocabulary of spirits. It's basically militant.
As the years go by, I realize how unique a style rock music is and how delicate you have to be with it sometimes; otherwise, you turn it into pop music or progressive rock or something else.
I don't trust songs that can be played at a kid's party and a club at the same time. I just don't think it's right. There's something reptilian about that.
Lyrically, I could be so much sharper. Melodically, I could be so much stickier. Musically, I could have so much more texture. So I'm constantly doing that, trying to find new ways to mix things up.
I learned a lot about lead; you don't have to blow your cookies in the first bar. It is much harder to be simple that to be complicated during solos.
King Crimson is never easy; it's challenging. That's why I like it.
Often the simplest song is the hardest to write.
I am certain that most composers today would consider today's music to be rich, not to say confusing, in its enormous diversity of styles, technical procedures, and systems of esthetics.
We kinda were a radio-rock band. We were still pretty technical, but I think the prog people hated us because we didn't do a bunch of weird time signatures... which are cool at times, but I'm more interested in progressive harmony.
My first two records are so simply constructed. The reason isn't because I wanted to make simple music. It's because I don't really have the chops.
Part of me is probably more conservative than people realise. I like my old string quartets, I don't like music that's trippy for trippy's sake.
