Quotes About Music

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.

Stone Temple Pilots, Bush, and Silverchair are taking the simplest elements of Soundgarden, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam and melding them into one homogenous thing.

I grew up in Synagogue in the boys' choir. We didn't listen to music in the house; only at temple. Then I went to a mostly African American high school on the South Side of Chicago and joined a gospel choir.

One thing that I have thought ever since Temple of the Dog is that I would never say no to an interesting collaboration, and that's partly where Audioslave came from.

Record companies feel they are the culture. Hip-hop has to begin to define, protect, and promote itself, and that's why we founded the Temple.

As far as rock groups, I really like Stone Temple Pilots. As for classical composers, it's Bach. I love Paganini, too, the Italian composer who would break strings during a performance and finish playing on just one string. Someone I would have loved to play with is Jimi Hendrix.

When I started writing songs for Temple of the Dog, I went to my room with my acoustic guitar, and I was happy staying in that mode. It was more chordal based and more lyric driven. I enjoyed not making riff-based songs built around a guitar idea.

There's a lot of spirituality and hope in our music that I think people are catching on to. It's not punk, it's not Green Day, not Offspring, not Soundgarden, not Stone Temple Pilots, not all of the other bands that are coming out.

When 'Quadrophenia' came out, I turned on to that because of the whole story with it, and there were just some really amazing songs on there. 'Love Reign' being the quintessential song on that record, I think. That was always one of the cornerstones of my temple, that song.

The Temple of HipHop has declared HipHop its own religion. We believe HipHop is divine. HipHop proves the existence of God.

I've been trying my whole life to get to this point, and it's finally here. It's an amazing record, and it happens to be with Stone Temple Pilots. I mean, what could be better than that?

For me, music is God and each song I make is an offering at the temple of music.

My temples are only in India. When I am in India, I go to the religious ceremonies.

Bach and Beethoven erected temples and churches on the heights. I only wanted to build dwellings for men in which they might feel happy and at home.

The golf swing is very, very rhythmic. There's a certain tempo to it, just like in music.

People like to hear songs that they can dance to. Even if they're sitting, they like being made to want to dance and move. By me being a dancer, I know how I'd dance at certain tempos. I was always good at it.

I don't even know if hip-hop is music anymore. It's definitely rhythm. It's definitely tempo. It's definitely beats per minute. But it's product. And television is product placement for the most part. It's not passion.

Any time I'm trying to find that groove on a big tempo song, I go back and listen to some Aerosmith records. 'Love in an Elevator,' 'Rag Doll,' all that stuff was really great music. It's something that I still dig and go back and listen to.

Every one of the songs was based around picking an acoustic guitar. That was part of the concept from the beginning, that the tempos were going to go from slow to almost mid-tempo.

From a musical standpoint, I was inspired by '90s hip hop, with a lot of drums and the tempos. I'm always inspired by David Bowie and Prince.

Since I started composing I have always worked with series of tempos, even superimposed the music of different groups of musicians, of singers, instrumentalists who play and sing in different tempos simultaneously and then meet every now and then in the same tempo.

When you sit down and think about what rock 'n' roll music really is, then you have to change that question. Played up-tempo, you call it rock 'n' roll; at a regular tempo, you call it rhythm and blues.

The tempo is the suitcase. If the suitcase is too small, everything is completely wrinkled. If the tempo is too fast, everything becomes so scrambled you can't understand it.

I put a metronome up to all the songs, and I tried to really keep it true to the original tempos.