Quotes from David Bryan

Every time you're on stage, you look out at a packed house, people all the way up to the top, people having a blast, everybody forgetting about the world for a couple hours. That's a special thing.

I like to see other bands, and I like to hear their songs, but I really like it when they engage the audience.

I'm not a guy who grew up in theater. I've always played in rock bands.

We're a bar band, so we know all the bar songs.

There's no way you can imagine going from kids in high school to being the best band in the world.

Any honor is an honor. You can't really say which one is better than the next, but it's always wonderful when you're honored by your peers for your work.

Our job is to be performers and give everybody a great night where they can forget about their problems and the world's problems, because they're always going to be there. They were there since the beginning, and they're going to be there until the end.

Whether you're black or white, you're a human - and that's what matters.

I've been playing piano since I was 7. I took 15 years of lessons. I've got a lot of miles on these hands.

My muse has always been the piano.

I don't like it when bands don't want to play that one song everybody wants to hear. I think that's cheating everybody, and I think it's selfish of an artist to do that.

A lot of my friends are doctors, and the difference between me and them is there's no musical emergencies to pull me away from dinner. 'I need the chords for that song right now!' No, it can wait.

When I'm playing in the band, I'm sweating - giving 120 percent.

When we get on stage, naturally, you just get out there and work it as hard as you humanly possibly can do it.

We started out a long time ago, and we've managed to just keep writing current songs and have No. 1 current records.

I think 'Slippery When Wet' was the turning point, where our records represent our energy that we do live.

We don't want to just be known for what we did. We want to be known for what we do and what we did. We've been highly productive since 2000 when 'Crush' came out.

Why would we want to do an experimental album? That's just selfish.

When I'm writing Broadway, it's for a character, a man, a woman, an old guy, a kid. In the band, you're talking in your own voice in the lyrics, saying what you think or feel. On Broadway, you're expressing that through a character.

I went to Temple Emanu-El, and my rabbi, Rabbi Landsberg, was a huge influence on me. When I was 7 and went to kindergarten, there he was, a young rabbi who didn't wear a yarmulke and rode a motorcycle.

You start out with your eyes wide open, and you've got dreams, and we worked really, really hard, and ours came true. So - and we're fortunate enough to keep putting out number one records, and we're fortunate enough to get out there and keep playing, and we truly have a blast.

The wild thing is that when I'm in the band, I can control my destiny with four other guys. As a composer sitting in the audience, you can throw good vibes at everybody, but you can't control anybody's destiny, so it's really unsettling.

I'm in a very successful band. We all love each other. It ain't ever breaking up. I also have a terrific hobby that became a full-time job. My only problem? There's not enough time to sleep in my world.

We thought the hardest thing in the world was to get a record deal, then the hardest was to get a No. 1 record, and then the hardest thing is to stay at the top. It's a lot of work.