Menu

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Tom Scholz Quotes

I’m certainly aware of the fans. I’m always hoping that what I’m doing is something they’ll like, because I do appreciate them. But, no, when I get into the studio, it’s all about what I like. It’s the same thing that led me to the possibility of making that first Boston album, which was to divorce myself from all other influences.

– Tom Scholz

Virtually every magazine, newspaper, TV station and cable channel is owned by a big corporation, and they’ve squashed stories that they don’t want the public to know about.

– Tom Scholz

The lyrics are always the last thing I do. I always have a recording of basic tracks and maybe some of the lead work. I’ll sit back and listen to it, and I’ll just concentrate on what kind of feeling it gives me. My goal writing the lyrics is to not disrupt that feeling.

– Tom Scholz

I’m not one of those artists who doesn’t want to play their most popular songs.

– Tom Scholz

I stay very much undercover and behind the scenes – most places I go, people don’t know how important I am. But I will admit that my favorite piece of clothing to wear out is an old T-shirt from a Boston tour that does have a Boston logo. But that doesn’t change anything.

– Tom Scholz

The music that I wrote and recorded is music that I really enjoy listening to. It’s just dumb luck that a lot of other people do, too.

– Tom Scholz

I don’t work out a lead section and practice it for a day and then lay it down. I don’t do that. The first time I do something I think is expressive or really cool, that’s what’s actually on the recording.

– Tom Scholz

When I first started recording, I was told by all of the experts in the business that the kind of music that I was doing was never going to sell. That disco was the coming thing and it was going to take over and what I was interested in was a minor sideline.

– Tom Scholz

I’m very realistic in my outlook on everything in life. When I look ahead in my mind to see what’s going to happen next, I see the good and I see the bad.

– Tom Scholz

I know everything that you can do with digital processing and digital editing inside and out, but I absolutely refuse to push the buttons and don’t even want to know how to load and unload the files.

– Tom Scholz

If you listen to my tapes, you’d hear 14 different ways to arrange the rhythm guitar behind the harmony vocal, and then 14 different ways with a different vocal. You’d have to really be a music lover to sit through that and find it entertaining. I enjoy it, but I’m easy to please.

– Tom Scholz

Turning corporations loose and letting the profit motive run amok is not a prescription for a more livable world.

– Tom Scholz

The one thing I will say for digital, and you won’t hear me say that many complimentary things about it, is that it’s cheap. It pretty much enables anybody to record as long as you can deal with the sound.

– Tom Scholz

Analog sounds so much better. I frankly can’t listen to digital audio for more than a few hours without really starting to hate what I’m listening to. Even decent 24-bit digital resolution really irritates me after a while.

– Tom Scholz

We need a free media, not just freedom of speech.

– Tom Scholz

I can sit down at a piano or with a guitar and just chug away for hours and be perfectly content with whatever comes out. But when it comes to something that somebody else is going to listen to, then I do feel a great deal of pressure to do something that’s exceptional, at least in what I consider to be at the limits of what I can do.

– Tom Scholz

When I write a song and come up with an arrangement and a vocal part, it’s always a challenge trying to find a singer who can interpret it sort of the way that I hear it, and it’s a very difficult thing to do. I mean, singing is like playing an instrument – everybody does it a little bit different – singing maybe even more so.

– Tom Scholz

Most people live their life around what other people do.

– Tom Scholz

I detest computers. If you had a device like that 30 years ago that froze up constantly, misbehaved constantly, lost your information and screwed up when you needed it the most, it would have been laughable.

– Tom Scholz

Someone will say, ‘Well, that’s good enough.’ As soon as I hear ‘Good enough,’ it really bothers me. I spend as much time as I think I can on anything I do. I try to do that with the people that work with me. I try to get the best out of them.

– Tom Scholz

The problem is that once I start on a song and get a rough idea of where I might go with an arrangement, I try dozens, sometimes hundreds, of different things on a song. The bass, the backing guitars, the lead guitars, the keyboards. It’s a long process. It’s like 100 steps forward and 99 steps back.

– Tom Scholz

I’m one of those artists that doesn’t actually hate my old hits. I love Boston music. I really like ‘More than a Feeling.’ After playing it to myself in a basement for such a long time, I’m happy to do it out on stage.

– Tom Scholz

‘Life, Love & Hope’ is… I’m thinking ‘larger picture.’ I’m not trying to preach to anyone. We all get lost and caught up in our everyday problems. Your cellphone doesn’t work or you got a parking ticket, you had a bad day at work. You can lose sight of the really important things in life; that’s what the song is about.

– Tom Scholz

I’m a total rink rat. I can do the toe loop, the lutz, a flip, and the Scholz. That’s one I invented. It’s like me – you jump, you rotate in the wrong direction, and you land on the wrong foot.

– Tom Scholz

I’m never too ambitious when I go into the studio. I always know that I’m just going into the studio to work on or try to develop an idea that I have for a song.

– Tom Scholz

Music is an escape for me.

– Tom Scholz

If things aren’t going well, music is what I turn to so I can get away from it, to take my mind somewhere else.

– Tom Scholz

The studio work is the nasty, tedious, hard and nerve-wracking part, interrupted by moments of exhilaration. Playing live is the chance to actually have some fun and get on a stage.

– Tom Scholz

There are an awful lot of people out there that don’t want to see Boston go away, and I’m one of them.

– Tom Scholz

Playing live was always definitely a lot more fun. You picture it: working alone in the studio eight or 10 hours a day with nobody else there, being frustrated and driven crazy by all of the things that you have to deal with, vs. thousands of people screaming and singing along with you playing.

– Tom Scholz

- 1
- 2