Top 70 Quotes & Sayings by James Righton
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English musician James Righton.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
Drummers are tough.
Within Klaxons, I never wrote the lyrics. I always wrote the melody and music with the other guys.
With the second record there's a need to show that we weren't chancers, that we could play our instruments.
We want our audience to enjoy themselves, we want every gig to feel like an event - of course there are musical elements of rave to our sound, but we wouldn't strictly classify ourselves as that.
There are so many bands that after their second record are headlining music festivals, and they're still... suited to playing in a tent. Very few bands when they headline a festival can pull it off.
The elements of rave that we try to incorporate are the fun aspects.
It's really important to push things as hard as you can but also remember who you are.
All of our albums are actually pretty similar, it's just the production that's different. Our songwriting is always the same.
Our intention when we first started as a band, was to be a rave band. We kind of just got it wrong. We tried, but we didn't have the talent or the knowledge to make a rave record.
There's a few bands that I always read about that complain about everything: the travel, the fans... you know they could be working a 9-to-5 job. They should get out if they don't like it. They should just get out. It's quite easy.
If you look at the whole New Rave movement, the big common ground is definitely the fun element. It's more outward-looking music than introspective.
It's fair to say I'm becoming addicted to endorphins.
The most sacred thing is our family and our daughter and each other, everything else matters, but it doesn't really matter.
When I first came to London I thought there'd be this amazing music scene, but I was quite let down by how little was going on and how few ideas there were in music. Bands were writing songs that had no melody, and I wondered, why is that, melody is the most important thing in a song. It's the thing that sticks in your head.
I spent all of my youth wanting to be in a band.
Even things like Abba - I think it's always got a dark, subversive element to it. You've got these four blonde Swedish people singing about their relationships breaking up while they're all going out with each other.
Being my own boss means I'm a nine-to-five dad Monday to Friday, it's the best thing ever. It's the most difficult, insane, wonderful job you could ever do, but it's more important to hang out with your daughter.
I will probably always be remembered as the person who used to be in Klaxons and there was a period of my life when I was trying to wrestle with that.
I've learnt to control worry, control doubt, control my inner Virgo.
I've always loved melody and pop hooks, slightly left of centre but I have always tried to balance it with songs that have lyrics you can sing along to.
We have high expectations and a high level of standard we try to reach in everything we do. Ideas get through if they are good enough, songs get their way in.
Governments don't get elected saying, 'We're going to lower GDP next year,' governments get elected on saying, 'We're going to increase prosperity and the happiness and the wealth of our nations.' But that kind of capitalism will only lead to the destruction of our planet.
New Rave was like the 60s - if you can remember it then you weren't there.
There was always talk that the Horrors didn't have any substance but I think they're proving people wrong.
Glowsticks look great. They look better than holding your mobile phone in the air.
I just fell in love with someone who happens to be amazing. We had a beautiful wedding and there was a lot of love.
We have been fortunate enough to travel a lot and we focus heavily on melody and that really is an international language.
I think the best pop is always subversive in its nature.
We didn't want to be another post-Libertines band singing about London and playing chords.
I'm less self-consumed, less narcissistic, I'm more selfless, more considerate. I've just grown up. It's a slow growth, because I was in a band for ten years. I was given the card to be able to live an adolescent life forever. You're celebrated, the more of a child you are.
People have used Crowley before, but we wanted to try and get a Crowley-reference song on the radio. We just wanted to have a go, and just try things. There was a kind of 'why not?' attitude.
I've always been attracted to odd chord changes and interesting melodies.
I remember feeling incredibly bored all the time, and I spent a lot of my time dreaming about what was going on in London, and fantasising about being there.
We've never been ashamed of the fact we are, first and foremost, a pop band.
For me, my favourite music was things like The Bee Gees, ABBA and 'The White Album.' The 70s is the period that I love more than anything.
It didn't matter if we put out 'The Dark Side Of The Moon,' we weren't going to be liked by everyone.
There's nothing better than looking out into the audience and having a whole sea of glowsticks staring back at you.
We like people who come to our gigs to dress sharp and to impress.
In the band's early days people didn't really know what we were, and they decided to shout at us before listening to the music.
When you're growing up you also like to go out and party a lot, and the music that we would hear going out would be techno and electronica. And earlier stuff like the Prodigy. It kind of stood out from everything else. Y'know, 'Firestarter,' where did that come out of? It sounded alien and otherworldly.
There's a time and a place for a bit of realism, and it's bands like Arctic Monkeys that do it amazingly well. But why do bands have to recycle something that's already been done very well? We wanted to make interesting pop music, and to drop in literary references.
The human race only ever realises how serious things are when it's at your door.
For our third album, 'Love Frequency,' we've gone back to our old style. The album is full of songs that people can sing along to. They're songs full of hooks.
There's a lot of crowd interaction at our shows. If they're giving off good vibes, we'll give good vibes.
My nan, God bless her, used to buy the NME, then go to the chip shop and be like 'ooh check out that' every week, she'd be saying, 'Oh have you heard the new single by Arctic Monkeys?' and it's like, I haven't even heard this!
To play the ultimate Reading set, you need to freak yourself out for a few days beforehand.
There was a lack of inspiration in London. There were a lot of dregs of the Libertines' movement, and we didn't want to do that. We wanted big melodies and hooks, organic melodies that could fall apart at any moment.
We are indeed a party band.
We don't like to play support slots.
We didn't want to be a po-faced, dull band - we wanted to have fun.
You have to set the bar higher and higher.
It was kind of obvious to everyone around me that I wasn't going to stay in the town I grew up in - I knew I had a dream of becoming something else.
The Smiths did that well, putting words in pop songs you wouldn't hear anywhere else.
After touring the first album, we went into the studio and started making music that was influenced by all the freaky folk music we'd been listening to. Lots of Canterbury scene stuff from the 1960s and '70s. Robert Wyatt, Soft Machine, Caravan, Gong.
I'd say dance is as relevant to us as, say, pop. It's as relevant as electronica, as relevant as ambient or experimental music. I wouldn't say it's something we spend more time on than any other genre.
Tom Rowlands does not rush a record.
It was tough to end a band that you've been in for 10 years.
We like music, we pretty much collect it, but I'm not geeky about it, although I'm usually in the record shop nearly every day.
I remember looking at my iTunes and was like, 'I haven't listened to an album in about three months.' What happened? I was once an 18-year-old kid who would just devour everything and want to know everything about every member of every band I liked. It became this thing where I hated the idea of music, and I didn't know if I wanted to make music.
People in bands should have a responsibility not to moan, not to complain about being in bands. Things could be a lot worse, you know?
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