Quotes About Riffs

Philosophically, I think riffs that start with E repeating itself are almost guaranteed to be great.

Man, don't get me started on Pat Travers. That dude writes killer blues rock and roll riffs.

Riffs are a repeating thing. They come back to you. Some of the things on 'Back in Black' were ideas we had knocked around on tracks before that: 'That bit - maybe we should take a chunk of that and slug it in here.'

During our first year, we were playing Priest and Maiden cover tunes all the time while we figured out what we wanted to do as a band. At the time I was getting out of metal and into punk. That's how Slayer's sound came together - it's the speed of punk combined with the big riffs of metal.

Once I started to make the transition to guitar - because I was playing keyboards when we started the band - I was trying to figure out riffs I could play without really having a lot of knowledge. And my dad ended up showing me Black Sabbath's 'Heaven and Hell,' because he knew I loved Dio.

I started learning everybody's riffs, from Donny Hathaway to Jeffrey Osborne to James Ingram. That helped me create my own style of singing.

'Kraken' is set in London and has a lot of London riffs, but I think it's more like slightly dreamlike, slightly abstract London. It's London as a kind of fantasy kingdom.

I think Batman Returns is right for riffs. I love it but it's the ultimate Tim Burton movie. There is so much that happens that's crazy and there are a ton of things to riff.

I couldn't wait to get out of school in junior high to get with Willie Green to pick up some of the riffs he knew.

I love AC/ DC and I love Led Zeppelin and I love guitar riffs.

The glorious, unending laps players take around refrains in Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" release even more energy than they gather up; the more they hug the song's corners to make sense of Dylan's casual threats, the more his disdain hovers over them, tantalizingly out of reach. In such defining moments, a stylistic genie got released from its bottle, and many found new places for themselves just by chasing some of the same riffs atop their own beats.

Some audiences can shake and bang their heads on the stage to riffs all night long, but subtlety is an art that must be mastered if you're going to be remembered.