Tommy Shaw

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“We're kind of defined by our mistakes.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“If I have an idea, I write it down, although I usually carry a little dictation machine with me because I'm too lazy to write.”

“When it stops being fun, stop.”

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

“I don't like looking back.”