A Quote by Joe Walsh
The new generation of musicians is writing music on computers, and this is very sad because the quality of songwriting has crashed and dived. There are some songs out that are made by only one guy who works a computer and doesn't play any instruments.
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I started quite late. I only discovered that I could write a song when I was, like, 17... some musicians, they're starting out, writing songs when they're, like, 12, 13. I never thought I would go into songwriting when I was that young.
My parents are both musicians and made sure we all played music. My brothers and sisters all play instruments, so we'll get together whenever we can and play. We play a lot of classical music - you know, the good stuff.
There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you 'play' with them!
I know some people really try to avoid music when they're writing and recording, but I am very inspired by so many different musicians, and I need to learn. I sit around and try to play along to certain songs that I really love. It helps you explore new territory. I don't think I listen to enough.
The only thing I do on a computer is play Texas Hold 'Em, really. Obviously my cell phone is a computer. My car is a computer. I'm on computers every day without actively seeking them out.
It's a very special generation, because during our careers the computer entered chess. So we know how to play without computers, which is also important. We can analyse without computers. I am not saying that younger players cannot do this, but we are more in the habit of doing this. That's important to improve your chess understanding.
I think the world is very much embracing this whole concept of musicians going out and playing their instruments and playing music for music as opposed to music that has something to do with some form of image or imagery.
I hadn't played any music since freshman year of college, more than thirty years ago, so I had to relearn everything. I started writing songs. Some were dance and trance songs (I listen to them a lot while I'm writing), and some were love songs, because that after all is what music is about - dancing and trancing and love and love's setbacks.
A lot of it starts with playing instruments and working with other people. Some of the new generation is doing it on computers and they don't have a clue as to how to play anything. That's probably one of the problems. They don't know how to make the melody, go through the chord changes. They're not starting from that same school of thought.
Because you have things like 'American Idol' and you've got radio stations that play music made entirely by computers, it's easy to forget there are bands with actual people playing actual instruments that rock.
The quality of my songs will get through to people. They are good songs. Lyrically, some of them are interesting: there's stories, a bit of humour. I'm very confident about the music I play, you know.
I think the other thing that's important is getting to a place, which very, very rarely happens with improvising groups, where somebody can decide not to play for a while. You watch any group of musicians improvising together and they nearly all play nearly all the time. In fact I often say that the biggest difference between classical music and everything else is that classical musicians sometimes shut up because they're told to, because the score tells them to. Whereas any music that's sort of based on folk or jazz, everybody plays all the time.
At the beginning of my career, I saw an opportunity to forge new ground and focus on songwriting. Not many people were doing that at the time. Pretty much nobody. I thought I could write some really cool songs that would rise above all these dozens of genres that exist within dance music. I'd make it more about the songs. For the last 20 years, I've been sharing stories of my life through music. I've been writing songs about my life.
Not only are we not using any programmed loops or computers onstage, we're also improvising with our instruments. We're playing our instruments probably more so than most people that I see play their instruments. I think we all sort of strive for that - we all want magical things to happen onstage. We don't say "mistakes" in this band, we call them "highlights."
I think our songwriting has evolved. We can show that we have continued to branch out and do different stuff and incorporate different instruments. When it comes to writing, I think that we have pushed the envelope. We can do whatever we want to try - a longer song or a shorter song, some different instruments, some piano, an intro with just vocals, something that's scathing. Whatever. However we feel the song should go, that's what we will do. With that mindset, I think it's made us better writers.
Everybody has their own approach to songwriting. When you're an electronic musician, the whole writing process just depends. Some people have a very live way of writing electronic music, very improvisational. They set up a lot of gear and do live takes. I'm concerned with having a specific kind of sound. There's not one second that I haven't put thought into. I put almost as much time into my live shows as I do into writing music, but they're two completely different processes. Some people think the way I perform live is how I write songs, which isn't true at all.
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