I don't know if I have enough guts to do a whole standard jazz record.

If I had had a chance to tour with Van Halen before the record, I think it would have been a different record.

I was growing up listening to Queen. Freddie Mercury threw those incredible melodies into his songs.

If people get to the end of the record, then that is a treat.

We weren't One Hit Wonders. We had a few hits.

It was fun while it lasted, but it never seemed real to me. I could not believe I was in Van Halen.

Spitfire asked me if I had a problem talking about Van Halen or Extreme. I really don't. There are people who are just going to want to know what it was like to play with Eddie.

My favorite Extreme records were the last two. I can't listen to the first one.

Your woman pisses you off so that gets in there; that's rock n roll.

When 5150 came out rock was king. Post Nirvana and Pearl Jam 1996 is a different story.

You have Extreme and Van Halen and the history that I have with other people I played with. There are some effects that will hopefully break that stereotype.

When I was singing Jamie's Cryin', people were going out of their mind because it was the first time they got to see Eddie, Michael and Alex play those songs. That was a thrill.

They hated Sammy Hagar for 12 years and they hate him to this day.

Dave thought he was bigger than Van Halen the band. So there was this catfight going on for 10 years.

There is no substitute for jamming and getting to know each other on the road.

When I was in Van Halen I was hitting notes that were out of my range. I never went for those registers before until Eddie pulled it out of me.

In my writing with Extreme, there are heavy themes. The cover photo has me with a gun to my neck. I am not advocating suicide. I am taking the philosophy that man is the measure of his own fate.

I have a little history. I met Stone Temple Pilots, and their guitar player was a huge Extreme fan. Somewhere down the road, Extreme made its statement.

You can tell the difference between songs that were created in a garage and songs that were created in the studio.

We didn't gel with Poison and the Bon Jovi. Bon Jovi was the best of the pop metal bands, but we never fit in with the hair metal stuff. We were never as hip as the Chili Peppers. We were in the middle.

I did some research and tried to pull out some old, classic Van Halen that they had not played in 10 or 15 years. I think that was Sammy's mistake. I he didn't want to do the Dave stuff.

I don't know if I have enough guts to do a whole standard jazz record.

Whether I sound like Sammy or not is purely coincidence. You have got to hand it to him, he sings his ass off. There is no moss on that stone.

I have had success throughout the years. Some of the hard rock bands today don't have the history that I have.

I am a big Pink Floyd fan. That is where a lot of the concept lyrics come from.

Michael Anthony is the Diplomat of Rock N Roll. He is the regular guy.

I sing in a higher register, and you haven't heard that on the radio in years.

When people don't get enough information, they make it up.

The voices on the record, that was trying to treat my voice like guitar players treat guitar tones.

There is nothing like singing a song that 20,000 people know and are singing back to you.

The blues is the foundation, and it's got to carry the top. The other part of the scene, the rock 'n' roll and the jazz, are the walls of the blues.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

In my view a jazz musician is a great musician.

Words are the children of reason and, therefore, can't explain it. They really can't translate feeling because they're not part of it. That's why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling.

So our ears got used to listening to jazz in the place that it was that the bass player could not play. No one really realized it and really addressed it until the bass players who could play their instrument came along and started doing something with it.

It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.

Humans are imperfect. That's one of the reasons that classical and jazz are in trouble. We're on the quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life.

I hate Stanley Clark, but I have to admit he's playing Jazz whether I like it or not.

I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here.

If one takes all the styles in jazz harmonically from the earliest beginnings to the latest experiments, he still has a rather limited scope when compared to the rest of music in the world.

I don't know who's 18 years old today that, 20 years hence, is going to be a jazz fan.

I don't like freedom jazz - I think it's void of roots and void of foundation.

Jazz needs the help. It's the more sophisticated music. All the other music is on the TV, but jazz isn't.

I listened to Billie Holiday a lot in order to learn to sing. She remains one of the extraordinary jazz singers. But my intent is to become my own voice, to be able to interpret these songs in my own way.

I think what we need is a more welcoming mode from the people who put on a hundred million country-western shows on television. How about a monthly jazz show?

Life is a lot like jazz... it's best when you improvise.

I still love the whole history of jazz. The old things sound better than ever.

A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.

Jazz is a music of great achievements but speed and chops serve a different function in jazz.