Top 99 Quotes & Sayings by Tobias Forge
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Swedish musician Tobias Forge.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
By sheer luck, we did our first tour of America as a headlining act.
I was 29 when we sort of broke through with Ghost.
At the end of the day, one of the biggest misconceptions of Ghost is that it's just about the devil. It's always been about mankind and living.
My first records were KISS's 'Love Gun,' Twisted Sister's 'Stay Hungry,' and Motley Crue's 'Shout at the Devil.' That had immense influence on me.
I always hate starting tours, especially when it coincides with an album coming out.
As a young teen, Satan and the idea of some sort of world that you could be in touch with that could empower you was very much the symbol for freedom.
It is difficult to be that band that doesn't do things the way other bands do it. It's a blessing and a curse.
I have a fascination for well-produced '70s and '80s rock with a lot of harmonies. AOR bands like Journey, Jefferson Starship, Toto, Kansas, Boston.
My brother gave me my first records when I was about 3 or 4 years old, because he bought a lot of records. And he was very nice because he gave me the records he thought I'd like more.
We've gone from venues that hold 500 up to 3,000 on our own, so I guess we're not entirely unknown. But there is a difference between a few thousand people and 20,000.
I come from a home that had a lot of music played in general.
I'm a big fan of a lot of prog music. As a record collector as well, I won't throw anybody or any band under the bus, but a lot of the records are fun to collect, are not necessarily very good. There are a lot of prog bands out there that it's a really cool record, but it's, like, not really there.
You want to be as successful as possible. You wanna have the strongest legs to stand on as possible for every album that you're doing.
The original idea of being anonymous - it was a great, naive idea on paper in 2008, not knowing to what degree we'd be touring or to what extent this was going to be a professional operation. That regimen is very hard to live by. What I hadn't foreseen was the fans and their willingness to embrace that and play along.
Sometimes I just wish I played in a band like Foo Fighters.
A band which plays songs such as 'Death Knell' or 'Prime Mover' can't just stand on the stage with a shirt and jeans-jacket. It must be more awesome than that.
I've been in lots of situations in my life where I've managed to turn pain into growing pains.
If you're going to a show that we're providing support for, or a large festival, you're obviously going to see a condensed version. We have to shave off some fat from the show, so we have to stick to the so-called 'bangers.'
Even if people would know who we are, or you could click on a Wikipedia page saying my date of birth, it does not necessarily mean that I have to go out on social media and tell you where I'm eating.
My name is Tobias Forge and I'm the man behind the mask in Ghost.
I'm an okay drummer, I'm an okay bass player, I'm an okay keyboardist, and I'm a quite good guitar player.
If you ever want to play bigger places, you need to have records that sound like you're playing in big places.
My first teacher... was extremely strict, mean, and deeply religious.
I sort of found King Diamond in second grade, but I didn't become a devoted Satanist until a few years later, but that was very much part of my adolescence as well.
The problem with religious doctrine, as with politics, because of its ability to give people authority, it has a tendency to attract people that want authority for all the wrong reasons, and that is what it has done across all time.
So many people have opinions based not on fact but spite.
I've had a very, very forgiving and a very, very supportive mother who never really gave me a hard time for going in and out of slackerdom.
Let's just say that I've spent a lot of time being not very successful.
The music comes first. Final lyrics are usually written very close to recording the vocals.
I've liked Kiss from when I was three years old. I've seen them, the real deal, with all the original members when they came back in '96 and all that, and that's fine.
When you're not successful as a musician, you are oftentimes unemployed.
The reason for a lot of bands not making it is because they don't really understand that your job is sort of divided into two different things. It's one thing creating it... It's like being an architect but also a construction worker.
Have I ever had dance lessons? I'm mobile, but not nearly as much as our promotional videos lead people to believe.
I always layer my vocals a lot. I sing a minimum of three layers of the same line every time, and then it's always one or two or sometimes even more harmonies.
In grade one and two, I was definitely into heavy metal and Satanic rock music, bands that had attributes that were quote-unquote 'Satanic,' even things like the Rolling Stones with 'Their Satanic Majesties Request' and 'Sympathy for the Devil,' but also like Motley Crue and Kiss and Alice Cooper.
There are many artists that I know exactly where they are born and what their names are and where they live, which are still very, sort of, hidden. Even Nick Cave, who has a film about himself nowadays, is still someone who I would claim to be utterly enigmatic.
I grew up in Sweden. It's a profoundly Americanized country. We have a strong tradition of Americana and always had non-dubbed American television, and embracing American culture a lot, so I always knew that I wanted to go to America.
I've always been very - for lack of a better phrase - hit-seeking, hit-driven.
I grew up watching a lot of film.
Even when I wrote death metal songs for a death metal record, I was always trying to do my best to make it as catchy as possible because that's how I like music.
As long as I don't go onstage completely normal and then jump into character onstage, I assume that most fans would be able to accept me as the creator. I can comment on the work the same way a director would on his movie.
Ghost has always been about make-believe.
Technically, a Ghost song could just be piano and vocals, but it could also be full, pounding, heavy-thrashing hard rock.
Even though 'Prequelle' is a record about death, essentially, it's a record about survival, and I think that that is something that's gone through all the records. Even back to 'Opus Eponymous,' there was a double meaning to things that doesn't necessarily have to do with evil sermons out of some old grimoire somewhere how to summon the devil.
Even in my hometown of Linkoping where I grew up... the church we had was very lavish - very boasty. So it ticked most of the boxes of big, imposing Christianity. And I love being there if I'm in town... because it's just this haunting place.
The belief in something bigger and supernatural is not the same thing as linear religion.
I like horror movies that have a degree of coziness to them.
There are people who just love to destroy other people. It saddens me to admit that, I think, at whatever state of human civilisation we arrive at, the will to destroy other people is something that is innate in some people.
I think very cinematically.
'Dance Macabre' feels like one of those songs that you want to play forever.
I constantly work with material that could be two years old, five years old, ten years old, as well as new things.
I prefer catchy, passionate, temperamental music. And as an upside of that, Ghost's repertoire has, over the years, been piqued by a few, sort of, hits.
If you've followed us from when we started playing live in October 2010, you will notice that there has been numerous changes over the years.
I do believe in the idea of a historic person named Jesus that was a kind of chill dude who was just telling people to chill and be nice to each other. And he got penalized for that.
I usually write a lot. I don't make an album and don't write for two years and then end up with a blank paper starting over.
My mom is very liberal. She has never been religious... spiritual but not religious.
Once you get people's attention, you have a greater responsibility to tell them something of value.
Public trials are very unsupervised and extremely swift and speak to the most primordial parts of us.
I love pinball.
In an alternative life, I would have loved to work in film - I love film.
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