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"The web is generally full of a lot of crap, and I saw that there was actually some really cool technology for some people to get their hands on and actually do something creative as opposed to sit and argue about whether Marilyn Manson sucks or not."
on MuchMusic's Class Dismissed contest

"I spent four years with people trying to figure out why I wasn't living up to the test scores."
on high school

"I don't think any of our 'music teachers' would have considered us 'musicians.'"

"I can't believe he put up with any of it. He was like every single thing we weren't: organized and sober."
on Artie Kwitchoff, the Goos' manager in the early days

"If you can't throw a baseball, or don't get good grades, or you're not lucky enough to be one of those popular kids, you gotta find something to do to get chicks, I guess, or be popular. Some people turn to guitars."

"Hang onto your records. You guys are young, you're probably not gonna be together forever, and she's not gonna give you those records back, pal."
dating advice for young men

"It's like a big nightclub on wheels."
on the tourbus

"You get those moments where you're playin' a show and you're singin', and you look down and there's some kid standing in front of you and they're sayin' the words right along with you. And they look in your eyes, and just for one second you sort of catch this thing where wow, man, this kid's thought about this. And this is interesting because this started in my bedroom."

"You see people smiling and dancing and it had been a little while since you'd seen that."
on the concert for NYC

"The 90s seemed to be more of a decade of maintenance for music, more so than the huge progressive steps [of the 60s, 70s, and 80s]."

"I wanna know who's buyin' these records, man!"
on the Backstreet Boys

"No, Iron Maiden was not a hair band. They had hair, as do I, [but they were not a hair band.]"

"We started out with a van with a dirty mattress in it, now we have twenty-somethin' people workin' for us, and four busses, and five trucks, and moving lights.... Big rock show, man!"

"There was no heat, so we used to bring in a heater, all kinda crowd around the heater with our guitars, you know. There were no windows, the snow'd be blowin' in.... And no matter what happened, we were just excited to be doin' it."
on the band's humble beginnings

"The shows were just crazy, just nuts, man. Every kid in town would show up, and we'd be flippin' around in this big pile of sweaty people and loud music."

"When you miss the 'record' button too many times because there were too many of 'em, then we'd quit."
on the drunken recording sessions for their early albums

"Five guys, no windows, you go to sleep it's 38°, you wake up and it's like 80°, 90°. And there's a german shephard sittin' outside the door."
on touring in the early days

"We were the critics' darlings for a long time. And that was great, but it wasn't helpin' us all that much."

"I kept waiting for the bus to turn into a pumpkin."
on the 1993 sscw tour

"We were just sorta inching along still, and we got sent home again. Make you kinda feel like that kid that got pulled out of the game."
on the 1993 sscw tour

"I was sort of the line of communication for a lot of years there, and it just became very unhealthy after a little while."
on tensions between John and George

"John called me and said he thought he was gonna let them put the record out, but we weren't gonna tour, cause he really didn't want to be in that situation anymore. And that's when I started medicating myself."

"We said, 'you think together we could kick his ass? Not one at a time, but together, could we take him down? Probably.'"
criteria for choosing Mike as the new drummer

"The garage door is shut."
on Iris

"[getting chicks] -- That's pretty much the driving force behind most successful men."

"I wore pajamas at a gig once. In Buffalo. It was like 10 o'clocok in the morning and we showed up to do this college lunchtime concert in our bathrobes. There were two people sitting behind the stage making pancakes and shooting them over our heads into the crowd while we were playing."

"The career advisor told me to go to college. She told me that being a musician was a stupid idea, I would never make it and that it wasn't realistic. Which is fairly good advice but if you take it you're a fool."

"We're once of those bands where our style is directly related to our financial crisis at the time."

If I could be anybody? I'd wanna be a house cat. Because then you can hang out and nobody bothers you.
in answer to "who or what would you be reincarnated as?"

"I ate a whole bunch of vindaloo, then I had a dream involving Indian people. When I woke up, I saw John was watching a video tape with Deepak Chopra."
in answer to "what was the last dream you had?"

"I owned 'Rubber Duckie' and other stuff like that, but the first one I recall going on my own and buying was 'Through the Past Darkly,' a Rolling Stones greatest hits. I've bought it 23 times since."
in answer to "what was the first record you ever owned?"

"I hear a song like 'On the Lie' and it makes me go, 'Holy cow, I remember the first time (John) played that for me!' And all the things that seemed like a stretch at the time don't seem like such a stretch anymore. That's part of the ability to age with grace. No one ever said from record to record, 'Whoa, what are you guys doing?' We grew up as the records grew up, but I don't think we noticed it until now."

"Maybe with this new record, when the big book on rock is written some day, people won't focus in on these last three years and go, 'Well, that was interesting, but where'd you come from?'"

"You know how in Florida they'll have concerts on beaches? In Buffalo, we have summer concerts on toboggan hills."

"Holy cow, you know what? My brand new Dell computer is sitting down at the front desk of the hotel right now, with a DVD player. Oh man, I am so excited!"

"The biggest misconception is that you're gonna have a castle in France. My idea of what success was when I was a child is most certainly not the same. And in this business everyone strives for success. It's a lot of work, a lot of traveling, and it's a lot of politics and running for office. But we could have worse problems. I could be on crack and selling my toes!"

"A failure to communicate is in general what we've been writing about for 15 years."

"Actually, being on tour is great fun, because your responsibilities are a lot less. On your day off, you can hang out with your pals. On your day off at home, you gotta clean the gutters and make sure the plumber gets there."

"All you can do is do what you're doing and keep asking yourself, 'Is this a) What I want to be doing, and b) Do I look like an idiot doing it?' If the answer to both questions is correct, on you go."

"In our early days, back in the late '80s, we got thrown off a couple of tours, but never booed off stage. One time when we opened for Extreme they actually paid us not to play the rest of the dates."

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