Musical Pressure Quotes

I'm not going to play lead guitar in a concert hall full of people, because I'm going to mess up a lot.

Whenever I go jamming, people are looking to cut me. The young ones learn my stuff and come play it at me, and I have to learn other stuff. I feel a lot of pressure. But it's cool. It's a good pressure.

Now that I have a little platform, and there are more eyes on me to release something, all that does is challenge me and put me under pressure, and I love being under pressure, especially musically. I might fail, but I'm excited about the possibilities.

It was always acting, singing and dancing that I loved. Not the horror of performing on the piano in front of an assembled audience of quiet people. I'd forget the piece just before I went out to do the concerto, the panic was too great . This was not anything that gave me pleasure. This was fulfilling somebody else's dream.

I cannot give a single concert at which I do not play one piece after the other in an agony of terror because my memory threatens to fail me. This fear torments me for days beforehand.

I didn't have traditional stage fright. If there was 500 people in the audience or three people in the audience, it didn't really make a difference. What made a difference was the conductor. Everything that I was scared about as a drummer was him. It was his face. It was whether or not he'd approve of my playing.

I don't find imitating other people's music easy at all. I remember being fifth in line for a Rolling Stones tour, early '90s, when Bill Wyman left, and I was hoping against hope that I wouldn't get the call to audition. I wouldn't be able to play a Stones song if you put a gun to my head.

I think part of the bad thing is that skill is emphasized so much that a lot of people, by the time they get to Juilliard, well I think they kind of forget why they got into music in the first place and if they're performers - this is a simplification, but a lot of them are trying to win a competition and play more accurately, or better, or more beautifully, whatever can be measured, than somebody else.

To fill the shoes of rock 'n' roll, because of the family I have, is a really hard thing.

With 'Mental Jewelry,' we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to get something happening. I think we lost some of the personality in the music. 'Throwing Copper''s mission was to begin to get some of that back.

I didn't have traditional stage fright. If there was 500 people in the audience or three people in the audience, it didn't really make a difference. What made a difference was the conductor. Everything that I was scared about as a drummer was him.

I didn't want to fall into the trap of competing with all these other great guitar players. I just want to sidestep the whole thing and get out of the race.

For three years, the 'Meistersinger' score was a ball and chain to me. It went with me to every city and concert hall.

There's a lot of instant spotlight and pressure when it comes to a Bond song.