I wrote 'The River' practically trying to rip off every lick that James Taylor had, so it was neat to hear him sing those lyrics because that's who inspired you to write them.
We heard later through the grapevine that we were being compared to the Furious 5, and because of that we were getting feedback that they were saying that we werent all that, that we were copying them... blah blah blah.
I wear my musical heart on my sleeve and show all my influences off. I'm happy for someone to point out that my song sounds like someone else's.
The REM and Nirvana successes don't mean much to me except as a potential distraction for bands who want to cash in on the trend. Don't try to sound like someone else. REM and Nirvana don't sound like anyone else.
When children start to speak they find their own voice by imitating the sounds around them. It would follow that bands do the same. Bands will find their own voice at some point.
I've created several musical trends, really. That's not because I'm so far out and fabulous. It's because most bands have no ideas of their own. They're so desperate they'll grab at any old straw.
I know when I started I would have been happy to sound like the Beatles or Joe Tex or whoever. You want to sound like most bands, you want to sound like their records and that's how you learn your chops.
I'll be honest. We copied everyone... the Beatles, the Bachelors. It was the only way people would even listen to you.
I thought if Oasis could get away with sounding like The Beatles, I could get away with sounding like Abba.
It was endlessly amusing to me to try to imitate John Lennon and Paul McCartney's harmonies using the guitar.
You'd be surprised. Drummers ape each other. The way every rock n' roll record sounds like something else but not all together. Everything other drummers play, if you're playing drums, they all hear.
Composers shouldn't think too much - it interferes with their plagiarism.
Somebody said I sound like an old lady, and I was really insulted by that. I'm trying to sound like Skip James and Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye.
They can sonically sound like me, but nobody's ever gonna be able to write songs like T-Pain. There's only one of those.
Everybody's just emulated us and now everybody just kinda takes our sound as their foundations.
I saw a band called The Electric Guitars, from Bristol. I described them to Roland, and he just started playing a riff on guitar and said, 'Do they sound like this?' And they did.
I've been ripping the Rolling Stones off with every song I write in some form or another.
I'm blessed with a good pair of ears. That's how I fooled my piano teacher. I'd watch his fingers and I'd listen to it, and I just kind of basically learned it by myself.
The way that we imitate each others' riffs is something that other bands don't do as much. If we're jamming with a jazz band, or I am jamming with a jazz band, I have to catch myself, the tendency is always to do that.
I thought the best thing you were supposed to do was find somebody and try to sound like them.
A guitar riff played on a piano doesn't come close to the purity of it being played on a guitar but I faked it enough to get by.
Bought all the Beatle records, I sounded just like Paul.
I was pretty young when my folks were playing those kinds of records, '70s rock and psychedelic stuff. So I just remember those songs being synonymous with my childhood, and I was always trying to imitate them on piano.
Whenever I do a parody it's not meant to make you hate anybody's music really.
I'm not really a piano player, but I play enough to get away with it.
