A producer should only be there to enable an artist to be himself.

We tune down a full step when we play but I never miss a note. I've learned how to keep my voice.

I play piano and guitar. Acoustic guitar. I tried studying classical guitar when I was 16 but it got really hard. I could never play a lead to save my life.

God would have to beam into me what I was doing and what the album actually sounded like because usually when I start a project like that, I already know what the album sounds like before I start it.

Good records - from my point of view, where I grew up which was Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull... bands that were pushing the envelope a little - musically and in production.

I could play everything but could never take a lead. My brain just doesn't work like that.

To actually put the time and energy into an album that would be better than Pull would be a hell of a lot of work, because I took that band really seriously, way more seriously than people took us. If you go back and listen to the records, you can hear it.

The songs were really complicated. I used to meet people in bar bands who were trying to play our songs and they were really struggling with it. Technically it was really difficult stuff.

It's like, on my solo stuff, every single person who buys the record, gets it. On the other stuff, the masses... when you have a hit on the radio, not everyone's going to get it. They are going to buy it for the hit.

I was just going more for what I've always been influenced by, European music.

A producer should only be there to enable an artist to be himself.

I'm a child of the 70's; influenced mostly by albums that had a wide variety of style.

I wouldn't do just a tour, it would have to be an album, and the album would have to beat Pull.

In general, I don't feel artists should need producers.

Throughout the years I have tried to hone my skills to gain mastery over the music in my head.

The main thing is that I've been studying composition for the last four years. I'd say it's the life experience combined with the lessons that enabled me to go much further.

I think it's important to know your limitations too.

Rock stardom and all that stuff like that was never like my main M.O., my main M.O. is musical growth, and if I become a rock star in the process, great!

We were lumped into the Lite Metal radio bands.

I'm not financially insecure anymore either so I don't have to sit there and get on the latest Poison tour just to make money, which is what a lot of them are doing.

I've studied voice from a few different people for years.

As a musician, basically the masses never thought I was a musician.

I'd like to tour, but again, to tour my music now would take a bigger band.

I was really into Black Sabbath, but heavy guitars can really be very limiting, it's a great frequency and it's great fun to listen to but on the other hand, musically you can do a lot more without it.

It's a little bit more like I want to give this to the people that are really into it first - I don't have a lot of desire to be like Bon Jovi or something like that, I really want to concentrate on the music.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

The artist need not know very much; best of all let him work instinctively and paint as naturally as he breathes or walks.

What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary incitement to work.

Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it. The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.

I'm inspired by nature. Other artist's work is important for developing my perception.

There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.

The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does.

To say that an artist sells out means that an artist is making a conscious choice to compromise his music, to to weaken his music for the sake of commercial gain.

What do you say when someone has truly inspired you? How do you express to an artist how deeply their work has affected you?

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.

When I say artist I mean the man who is building things - creating molding the earth - whether it be the plains of the west - or the iron ore of Penn. It's all a big game of construction - some with a brush - some with a shovel - some choose a pen.

You have to find what makes you stable in the storm. Then, no matter what's happening round you, no matter what the hype or the publicity, you can still manage to make leaps in your work as an artist.

The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.

I've always felt that if one was going to take seriously this vocation as an artist, you have to get beyond that decorative facade.

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.

The most colorful section of a bookstore is the display of SF books, with art by people like Wayne Barlow, who is a terrific artist.

Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.

Let not a man do what his sense of right bids him not to do, nor desire what it forbids him to desire. This is sufficient. The skillful artist will not alter his measures for the sake of a stupid workman.

I so much appreciate it when anybody tries to make something and tries to be an artist - I'm happy to see the work.

The artist is seen like a producer of commodities, like a factory that turns our refrigerators.

I've also been willing to share any help that I could give to any other artist.

An artist, under pain of oblivion, must have confidence in himself, and listen only to his real master: Nature.

What is it they want from the man that they didn't get from the work? What do they expect? What is there left when he's done with his work, what's any artist but the dregs of his work, the human shambles that follows it around?

No artist work is so high, so noble, so grand, so enduring, so important for all time, as the making of character is a child.