Quotes By Tommy Shaw

I was born in Alabama and my first live music experiences were in church. Every Sunday we watched regional gospel groups on television singing their hearts out.

You can have fun, but you also have to put on your thinking cap every day.

There were some older guitarists on my side of town, and I got to know many of them.

As a solo artist, I just felt cemented in front of the mike stand. There was very little time to play with the audience and be a band member.

If music became extinct now, I don't know what I'd be good for.

I've always stuck with Gibsons. I've had Guilds and Fenders, too, but I always wind up going back to Gibsons.

When I was about 3, my grandfather used to give me and my sister a nickel to sit out on the front porch with him and sing songs.

Around '75 when the recession hit, club owners started going to disco because it was cheaper for them to just buy a sound system than it was to hire a band.

When I became 16 I started thinking seriously about singing.

It is all about being open and paying attention to the music in your head. I think most people have original music playing in their heads from time to time.

I wish I had a nickel for every song that I've left in the bathroom, written down on a matchbox, or just totally forgotten about.

I'd better be on the road, or I'll be going nuts. I'm not the kind of guy who sits around with a pipe and slippers watching soap operas.

It was more fun trying to figure out I Want To Hold Your Hand than to take lessons. By this time I knew basic chords.

I love the idea of stepping out of the band situation into a solo world with no boundaries, no expectations, where nothing is out of bounds.

I feel like I have the greatest life an artist could dream of.

Les Pauls work out real well for me because I'll beat the hell out of them and they'll still work. The only trouble with them is finding good ones.

I'm not the kind of guy who deserves to play a vintage guitar because I'm too rough on instruments.

On acoustic guitar I tend to stay in the key of D for some reason. On electric guitar I keep basic: C, G, D, and A. The key of D minor is also real good for me.

By the time I did that third solo album, I'd finally learned how to do it, but I'd also learned that I liked being in a band.

We were playing popular music, but we were doing our own arrangements because we were too lazy to sit down and figure out the originals.

I wrote songs all my life, where anyone wanted to hear them or not.

Songwriting is the other weight on the opposite side of the scale from touring. They balance me out creatively.

I have always been a sucker for the big, upbeat chorus.

When it stops being fun, stop.

I don't like looking back.

I don't write on tour. There is so much to do day in and day out when you are on the road.

When a song gets its legs and begins to come to me, this is the euphoric hook that keeps me wanting to continue.

Once you start thinking about it in a mercenary frame of mind, then you're finished. You're a joke, because there are too many mercenaries out there already.

Timing is everything.

I soon gave up instruction for self-teaching.