I'm in a funny position: I've been in one band in my life and that was with my brother. As incredible as that has been, I feel like I'm missing out a little bit on being in a real rock band - or how I imagine being in a real rock band to be. It's like being in a street gang: you all wear the same leather jacket or whatever.
Kansas has always considered itself a "rock band" - some people might say "symphonic rock band," others might say a "classical rock band," but we've kind've prided ourselves on being a rock band. Kansas rocks.
You know, being in a rock band, you can't overdo the costume changes too much because everyone thinks, oh, that's not a real rock band. Look how many times he changes costumes. That's not rock. Rock's about going on in a T-shirt and staying in it and getting it all dirty. But that's not really my approach.
I have absolutely no interest in rock and roll. I'm just being David Bowie. Mick Jagger is rock and roll. I mean, I go out and my music is roughly the format of rock and roll, I use the chord changes of rock and roll, but I don't feel I'm a rock and roll artist. I'd be a terrible rock artist, absolutely ghastly.
I grew up with synthesizers and weird, spacey music-hip-hop, R&B, modern rock-that I heard on the radio. That's influenced the way I play music. It's natural for me to go with what I feel. If I didn't let that other stuff out and stuck to a certain format, I would feel like I was missing out on something. I'm just enjoying my ride and being who I am.
With Rock Band, you can play along to Black Sabbath or Nirvana and possibly find new ways of appreciating their artistry by being allowed to perform parallel to it. Rock Band puts you inside the guts of a song.
Being in a rock band for 20 years is not the best resume for anything else.
Rock and roll doesn't necessarily mean a band. It doesn't mean a singer, and it doesn't mean a lyric, really. It's that question of trying to be immortal.
I think Everclear is a weird combination of a singer-songwriter and a hard-rock band. That's why some people really dig the band, and some don't.
There are bands that make parodies of being in a band, like Spinal Tap. That's a big influence. They're making fun of a rock band, but they write lyrics that are better than real rock bands.
The misunderstanding out there is that we are a 'hard rock' band or a 'heavy metal' band. We've only ever been a rock n' roll band.
The most inspiring drummer for me is Stewart Copeland from The Police. The Police are the first band I can remember really liking, and Copeland is a guy who was playing in sort of a rock band, or a rock-pop band, but he didn't want to do the traditional kind of rock drumbeat. He was doing all these kind of reggae rhythms, and the reggae style is almost an exact opposite of the rock mold of drumming.
I think that every band is different, and in fact that's one of the biggest problems with the old-school music industry is that... one band would be successful according to a certain approach, and then every other band in the label gets sent down the same tube.
I was in a rock band; I was my own folk singer; I was in a death metal band for a very short time; I was in a cover band, a jazz band, a blues band. I was in a gospel choir.
I certainly didn't want to be in a punk rock band, because I had already been in a punk rock band. I wanted to be in a band that could do anything - like Led Zeppelin.
When I'm playing 'Rock Band,' I'm like, 'Man, someday, later on in life when I'm a famous rock star...' Which gets a little harder to convince myself of as I reach middle age, but it still happens a lot.