Adam Schlesinger Quotes
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Cheap Trick has played with every band on the planet.
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The Ting Tings have been a huge hit in my family. I have two young daughters, and both of them love that record, so I pretty much have to listen to that ten times a day.
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I think people sometimes confuse 'catchy' with something that should automatically be a hit in today's world. I mean, obviously we write a lot of stuff that's catchy, that sticks in your head. But that doesn't necessarily mean that middle-school kids are going to want to listen to a song about a lawyer or a Subaru or whatever.
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Andy Chase and I were keyboard players originally, and we became guitarists later. But it's fun for us to focus more on the keyboard stuff sometimes.
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A song sometimes ends up with its own internal logic.
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With Fountains of Wayne, after 'Stacy's Mom' happened, we started making a little bit more money and getting a little bit more known.
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Scotland is a picturesque country where the people are friendly yet completely incomprehensible. Also, the national delicacy is a sheep's stomach filled with its liver, lungs, and heart.
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I usually start with a lyric and see where that takes me.
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The Cleveland Cavaliers are forced to play in something called the 'Quicken Loans Arena.' This is a terrible name for a sports venue.
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I like switching gears. I'm kind of a chameleon.
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In promotional mode, every day is a series of decisions. You can easily fill up your day with checklist stuff.
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Saxon, if you are unfamiliar, is a British heavy-metal band that has been around since the mid-'70s and was in no small part the inspiration for Spinal Tap.
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What should a song be about? It's a trick question for songwriters because lots of amazing songs aren't 'about' anything. Or, at least, they're not about anything that's obvious or logical.
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The nature of the music business is such that it's better to have a few chances for some things to be successful than just one, and that's kind of been my attitude all along.
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With the TV stuff, we usually hand in final, finished tracks. The turnaround time is so tight that there's no time to demo anything; you just do it.
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I think I initially started inventing characters in my songs because I didn't want to write directly about myself. Also, as a kid, I loved all the character names in Beatles songs, like Eleanor Rigby and Lovely Rita and Mean Mr. Mustard and Maxwell and Rocky Raccoon.
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I think one of the pitfalls of doing your own music is that sometimes you can never be satisfied with it: you're afraid to say that it's done, and you keep reworking it or re-recording it or re-writing it.
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I tend to write songs that are about something pretty specific. A lot of them tell some kind of little made-up story.
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It would probably be better if I got involved in fewer things just because I'd have more time to write for my own purposes... But if somebody calls you up with a really cool project, it's hard to just say 'no' because you don't feel like working.
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Most of the jobs I've gotten are from people calling me. I don't actively solicit a lot of work like that, but maybe I should.
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One of the more surreal days I've ever had in the recording studio was Martin Fry teaching Hugh Grant his old dance moves. Showing him how to do the hair-flip and the point, and all these sort of trademark moves of his.
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I started taking piano lessons when I was about 5, and there was always a lot of music in my family: my parents both play instruments, my grandparents were classical violinists, and my grandfather was actually a music professor and a conductor.
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London is a vast, complex city designed by the same guy who created the Habitrail.
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Your job as a producer is to make suggestions without putting your ego in front of everything else. Also, I think you want to focus on that artist's best qualities and really highlight them.