A Quote by John Petrucci

When we came out, the kind of music that was popular was Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains, all that stuff. That was when we released our second album, 'Images And Words', and it was something people werent used to hearing maybe, and it sort of rose above all that somehow, being progressive, or whatever.
Unlike a lot of my cohorts from the '80s and '90s who totally blamed the shortness of their careers on bands like Nirvana and Alice in Chains and Soundgarden and whatever, I was very into a lot of those bands.
I'll never forget getting my first Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chain records, and hearing that wonderful, beautiful darkness. And the rhythmic intensity, that's what attracted me more than anything else.
I remember hearing songs from the Mother Love Bone album, and hearing Alice in Chains, and feeling like this is more than just a fad or moment.
Soundgarden signing to a major, then Mother Love Bone, and seeing the same happen to Alice in Chains. We were all suddenly making music and recording at the same time, and we had money to do it. It wasn't like a $2,000 recording that you do over a weekend. It's like, 'Wow, maybe this will be our job.'
It is against the spirit of our non-discriminating times to openly prefer one sort of music to another, so let's just say that hearing grand orchestral music in a public place is exhilarating in a way that hearing popular music never can be, if only because, in a popular music age, a full orchestra is less familiar to our ears.
I'm quite interested in what words can be, if it's very few words, and it's a kind of club track but it has a sort of uplifting or spiritual kind of feeling to it. Somehow, something bigger than just the words on the page happens when you hear it all together. Sometimes I notice when I'm DJing, I put on a lot of tracks that feature vocals. I guess for me, it's just from growing up loving songs, so maybe I'm geared slightly more towards dance music that features a song element.
There were two things I discovered when I toured with Snoop. One was that the band was all jazz musicians. The second was to instil in me a respect for other styles of music. From then on, whenever I played a new kind of music, I came with the same kind of open mind. What are they trying to do? What are they hearing? How do they see music?
I don't listen to Nirvana plugged anymore. I think there's a whole group of people who have semi-forgotten that Nirvana used electric guitars because of the 'Unplugged' album. It's so great.
In other words, I think that if an audience listens to something as an experience of how in tune it is or something of that kind, that the whole point is somehow being missed, and the music has failed.
In a sense, I'm always hearing music of some sort, whether it's people talking or surface noise or whatever, because there is no privacy. So when I'm by myself, I just kind of like to be and reflect, and I can't do that when I'm listening to music. Because it's someone else's reflections, not mine.
For our first album, we were our own dressers. We didn't have no stylists. We came up with all of the ideas when it came to dressing. At that time, Cross Colours and Jabos were really popular, so we were able to get stuff from them, but we always added accessories.
I understand why some bands don't like test new songs, but for us it's been very helpful and it hasn't really backfired. I was nervous that our second record was - you know, you could hear the whole thing on YouTube before the album came out because we played it all live, but it ended up being something that people appreciated.
I think all of us set out to try and reach as many people. That's the whole point of being in a band: trying to get your music out there. So, any opportunity to do that, within reason. We're informed about where our music is going to be used; we get to say yes or no. There are things we can turn down, and there are things we can agree to. When it comes to movies and stuff like that, it's great for us. I don't think it's selling out. Maybe 10 or 20 years ago it was seen as selling out, but nowadays I think it's the only way to get your music out there.
I was doing these music videos online for a couple years, and they'd be doing well to varying degrees. And I released an album, and with the album, I released three new music videos, and one of them was featured on Jezebel.
You use words like 'introvert' and 'extrovert,' various traits of a personality. A lot of that stuff, we used in drama school, and that was kind of interesting, to realize my teachers sort of ripped off a lot of Jung. And how much of it is part of our society now, these phrases, introvert and extrovert, where it actually came from.
Once you start out, you are kind of finding out who you are, and then by the time you get to the second album or you've been touring a lot, doing live shows or whatever, the sound starts to shift slightly to something that is more the true essence of what the band really is.
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