Top 110 Quotes & Sayings by Billy Squier
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician Billy Squier.
Last updated on November 21, 2024.
There's this raw, basic quality people expect in my music.
I'd always envisioned 'The Big Beat' leading off 'The Tale of the Tape' with the biggest drumbeat the rock world had ever heard. I knew I had something good... but I had no idea just how good.
I knew that I had done my best on 'Tell The Truth'... I was so proud of that record.
I tend to be very methodical for a variety of reasons. I'm more of a plodder.
I'd gone to New York at an early age, and I got beat up a little bit, emotionally. So I thought I'd go home and go to music school.
I think if you're going to a concert and spending $15 for a ticket for you and your girlfriend, then you're going to buy a T-shirt, and you end up spending close to $100 a night, what with gas in the car and anything else to get you in the spirit of things, I just think that people deserve their money's worth.
British rock & roll became the gospel for American kids like me.
I was very humbled by the 'one-man Led Zeppelin' comparisons.
I'm the only person I know who's never had a regular job.
Following the example of Bruce Springsteen or Bob Seger, I wanted to have a band, a sound and a personality, yet maintain a singular position of being able to control and motivate the flow of things.
I'm basically a nice guy.
If 'Emotions in Motion' comes out right, I can write the book on the formula rock star.
Take 'The Stroke,' for instance. Plenty of people saw sexual connotations in that song but to me it was about what goes on in the business world.
I don't make grandiose, prophetic statements in my songs.
I do keep my eyes and ears open but I don't spend a lot of time looking at what other people are doing to see how I can fit in.
I wouldn't want to end up in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as the 'Master of Hip-Hop Samples,' but you take what you can get.
There's a time that you realize that you're not gonna get out of a room without playing certain songs.
I always wanted to merge heavy metal with pop music, but I think that because I grew up more with pop, the Beatles and the Stones, I tended to affiliate myself with those projects.
I don't feel any great need to dress in funny-looking clothes and be recognized as a star, nor do I get that much satisfaction out of hanging around all the main clubs so people can see who I am.
I was good at sports - basketball, football, tennis and dropped them all. At 16, I didn't care about sports anymore.
I was always regarded as being better than ninety percent of the kids in school, but I was also something of a loner.
At all points, you have to look at what you're doing and say, 'Do I want to do this?' 'Am I up to it?' 'Am I strong enough?'
I mean, I would always like to play bigger places and play for more people.
I had great trouble believing in myself, so I didn't believe in my success - I didn't enjoy my success, which I thought was insane.
I try to remember our relative insignificance on this planet and that these seemingly important things do not mean quite as much as we think they do.
I think that 'Tell the Truth' is one of the best rock records ever made by me or anyone - I really do.
I'm happier in a garden.
When you're on stage playing, when I plug in a guitar and chord, I'm 16 years old again. I feel the same excitement. It's very overwhelming. It engulfs you.
I'm always happy when I'm outside working in the company of nature.
That's a dangerous combination, serious and rock 'n' roll. But yeah, I'm pretty serious. I've been at this a long time, and it takes a certain amount of seriousness.
For me, music is this incredibly cerebral trip. You turn on the radio or put on a record, and it's your song, it's what you see.
I was a mess... It's like 'Rock Me Tonite' is an MBA course on how a video can go really wrong.
I was a good-looking, sexy guy. That certainly didn't hurt in promoting my music.
I have a great deal of respect for myself as a musician and a writer, even if I'm not doing it anymore.
I would never dispute the fact that music is my greatest love.
I never try to create a different personality or anything like that. I'm not like David Bowie or somebody like that, who changes personas each year.
I don't really like fighting.
I don't try to be difficult. I just care so much about these albums that I get crazed sometimes when I'm making them.
Certainly, I don't believe in rebellion for its own sake. But I think if you strive to do something in an individualistic way, you just become a rebel by definition.
I take songwriting very seriously and I wouldn't want anything I do to be construed as frivolous or mundane.
I don't feel I have to be Jackson Browne. Still, I like to say something.
When I write the songs, I don't dictate how people should interpret them.
I'm the middle-class kid; it doesn't sound exciting, but a lot of my audience is middle-class kids.
I'm not a poet. So the writing process is a difficult one for me.
I have a lot of gay friends.
Music is cyclical, but I've never thought of the music I make as being so off the wall or left field that it wouldn't always have an audience that would relate to it.
Basically, my life was music, and I was always consumed by it.
Becoming a Top Ten artist has surprised me.
So everybody is trying to play like Eddie Van Halen. I think it's rubbish. I think Eddie's great, but everyone's trying to do what he does and it doesn't make for a lot of interesting music.
I always loved music. I liked to go to church because I liked to sing the hymns.
I just started exploring the guitar and seeing where it would take me.
I guess I could sit around and say, 'Gee, I wish I were playing at the Capital Centre tonight instead of Hammerjacks,' but it doesn't happen.
The whole British music scene of the mid-sixties had a pretty profound effect on me.
I got out of the business because I went from being the biggest artist on my record label to someone they didn't even want to have around.
We don't want to categorize our music. Some people say you need a definite musical direction to give a group visibility.
It certainly is a positive thing... having a trademark.
I can put on 'Revolver' or 'Led Zeppelin II' and then 'Tell the Truth' and there is no quality gap.
Even in 1971, J. Geils was into the Stones. When I heard Geils, I realized that a lot of other people hearing them had never heard the Stones.
I'm a huge garden and landscape fanatic.
When I grew up, I had influences as diverse as Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix.
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