Benmont Tench

“I've always written songs since I was a kid - always.”

“I did enjoy Nashville a lot of the time, because I made really good friends who were really good songwriters, and they would be a joy to hang out with.”

“I learned that the songs that mean the most to me are the songs that I write by myself. While there were people I wrote really well with, particularly Gary Nicholson and Delbert McClinton, and I really enjoyed the experience, I came away from it feeling like I need to write by myself.”

“What a good session musician does is listen to the song, to the artist, and to the other players. That way you can help bring out the song and help the artist express what they want to express. It's never about you stepping out and showing you can play something fancy.”

“I learned to play piano in a rock n' roll context or band context from country records - you know, Floyd Cramer - and from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Stax. And none of those are keyboard records.”

“I'm not an overly skilled piano player or organ player at all, but I think I'm the right piano and organ player for the Heartbreakers. And I've been the right piano and organ player for a lot of sessions that I've been called on.”

“I don't know about five guys against the world. It's more like five guys against these three chords, and we're gonna wrestle 'em down no matter what it takes.”

“Sometimes you work with somebody you've never heard of because you just feel like working.”

“I think we've always been better live.”

“The people that call me to play on records call me because they think that I will suit their music. And the people whose music I suit are by and large people that I'm a fan of.”

“I've spent most of my life playing with Tom Petty, and he's a damn good songwriter.”

“There was a period when I wrote in Nashville for Maverick and then Warner/Chappell, and it was interesting.”

“The idea that I could write songs that people wanted to hear came from other people who said they liked what I did.”

“I'm not the best singer, but I like the way I sing my songs.”

“I loved Mal Evans holding one note down on You Won't See Me from Rubber Soul.”

“I'm playing 10 feet from Mike Campbell every night. I look across the stage, there's Howie. Tom's in the middle and we're playing all this stuff I love. It's great.”

“I was just writing songs because, if a song shows up, you've gotta write it. I didn't know what to do with them. I didn't have any faith in my voice.”

“Fortunately, as we all know, it's impossible for anybody but Jimmy Smith to really sound like Jimmy Smith.”

“Whoever hired me might've just heard 'Refugee.' Well, I'm not the secret to 'Refugee.' The secret to 'Refugee' is the song. But if somebody really good calls me up to play on something because they like the way I played on 'Refugee,' then I wind up playing on another really good song.”

“If you call attention to yourself at the expense of the song, that's the cardinal sin.”