"Rami has a big, fat stogie, and a Tom Waits record. Mario's doing a little stretching. Jake-- I don't know, he's out shopping or something. I'm taking a shower cause I like to be neat and our bass player's getting love from somewhere." --Mike on what they do before shows.
"Greg likes to go out with a smash. He says, 'Jake, I don't care what we do every night just as long as we go out with a smash.'" --Jake
"Jake: Funny, very witty. Mike: Fast. Fast on his guitar; fast on his bicycle. Greg: Mr. Bass. Solid, solid. Rami: Fun, just fun." --Mario describing the others
"We call him Captain Midnight. Sometimes we eat tacos together." --Rami on Jake
"Mike, you've got your own webpage?! That's so great, man!" --Jake
"He's in our group, but-- and I don't mean this in a bad way-- he gets around." --Jake on Rami playing on other groups' records
"He likes it slow, he likes it low, he likes it simple." --Jake on Greg
"He brings to the band healthy snacks." --Mike on Mario
"I guess he's the only one who could stomach me that long." --Jake on why only Rami stayed after the first record
"Jakob also has a pet grooming service on the set. He'll cut your animal's hair for a discount. So bring your pet to the show. We got the clippers and the buzzers and we'll shampoo 'em up." --Mario
"I've always wondered where Mario got those sunglasses. I've been meaning to ask him. They're a bit strange." --Jake from Artist's Cut of "Three Marlenas"
"I remember having to say to Mario 'Okay, look,. when you count off the first song tonight, count it really fucking loud with the sticks. None of this quiet shit.'" --Mike
"The bass player and I hit it off right away. Probably the most important element of me in joining a band is whether or not I get along with the bass player musically. I usually end up being real tight with the bass player on a personal level, too, because of that." --Mario
"Mario and I are the foundation, sort of a bedrock." --Greg
"You've got the two guys who don't party right here." --Mike (about him and Mario)
"I can't play guitar like Mike, and I certainly can't play piano like Rami. Well, I can play bass like Greg." --Jake
"I guess we've all kind of done music since we were wee lads. I started in Minneapolis when I was about 10, playing guitar, and relocated to Los Angeles in search of Jakob Dylan at about age 18, and it only took about 10 years to hook it up, so that's not too bad." --Mike
"I just knew about it from high school. I used to go to Fairfax high school down the block and run down there and get a bagel and play piano for first period." --Rami on Canter's Deli
"Because of [my father], I've been around music forever. He played keyboards and saxophone with America-- a utility player. Those were supportive instruments and he was serving the music." --Mario
"That was the first group that you looked up at the stage and kind of said, man, where do I buy the jacket, I want to join the team. I actually have a vest that, I got to meet Joe Strummer on that tour and he gave me a vest, a combat rock vest, his little military fatigues. That was when I first, you know, went out and thought I wanted to be up there. And I wanted to just look like a gang, that'd be like the coolest thing." --Jake on being inspired by The Clash
"People ask me all the time, 'What was you dad like as a parent' and I say, 'I'm 27 years old; I'm not a crackhead; I don't go on afternoon talk shows and spill.' I mean, you can figure out for yourself that he did a decent job." --Jake
"We started out-- at least the way we started out-- we never thought about making records or even playing shows really. We just played in the garage, and have friends over, and thought that was as big as the world was, you know, you never really imagined-- it wasn't that you didn't think it was possible, it's just like you were having such a good time doing that you didn't really care about getting interested in anything else, like that was a mouthfull right there, you know, that was a good time." --Jake on his first bands
"We were really blown away. These are just songs that the Wallflowers were pumpin' out, you know, for years. Jakob really hasn't changed his view in writing or anything... it's kind of, it's bizaare how all of a sudden it's just the right thing at the right time." --Rami on the band's sudden popularity when trying to get a record contract for their second album
"A lot has to do with just being the underdog for a long time and knowing-- not feeling, but knowing-- that people were rooting for me to lose." --Jake on why it took the Wallflowers so long to get recognized
"That's what it felt like for three years trying to make this damned thing. It was like trying to pull down a horse." --Jake on how the 2nd album got it's name
"I threw it on, and it blew me away, song after song." --Mario on the first time he heard BDTH
"We've all graduated to having our own hotel rooms, so that gives you time to read a book or do whatever you need to do."
"The fatigue is just too much to deal with, let alone throwing booze or whatever on top of it. Even the second-hand smoke is starting to bother me."
"I can walk around and most of the time people don't bother me or recognize me."
"I try to eat as well as I can, and I'm not excessive with anything. I don't really drink or smoke, so I'm not out there partying. I would fall apart if I did. Also, I exercise and stretch a lot. Luckily, most of the time we get to stay in nice hotels that have little gyms in them. I do some kind of work-out when I can. I don't lift a lot of weights, but I'll ride an exercise bike or something."
"I love being on the road; I'm young and unattached, and I'm seeing the world. Guys who have wives and attachments have a harder time because they're leaving families behind. I'm single so it's not an issue for me. Besides, I love to travel."
"I don't take any of it for granted. This is my dream, and I'm living it. I always wanted to go out on the road and play music and do like my dad did."
"I find that as long as I feel good physically, my spirits are going to be high. If you start to get worn out-which is inevitable with lack of sleep, being overworked, changing time zones, bad food, and airplanes-that's when you start to feel it, and that's when you can get bummed out. You really have to take it easy."
"Exploring the city, though, can help get rid of some of the tedium of the road. Get out and go to a museum, go to a bookstore, walk around. You can get stuck in some weird places, and in the winter you can get snowed in, which can get brutal. But usually it works out that you get a day or two off in a cool place. Obviously it you're in New York on a day off you're going to have a good time. As for other places, you just have to explore, and that can be part of the fun of being on the road."
"I'm a little bit of a health nut, so I make sure to pack the vitamins I want to take, plus supplements and herbs and things like that."
"You can never have too many T-shirts, socks and underwear."
"Touring is day-to-day and you have to get everything while the getting is good-- food, gyms. If it's there, take advantage of it. If the food is good, eat your fill. You never know what it will be like the next time. Even after we had sold millions of records, we found ourselves in the funkiest of places-- dressing rooms that were trailers with no bathrooms, with horrible food. Being in rock 'n' roll is about being flexible. It's part of the fun of it, too, really- it's a challenge, but it can be fun."
"For me, the more people there are, the more pressure I feel, because there are more people there to entertain, especially if a gig isn't going as planned or as well as you would like."
"We need to hit it big in Paris so that my wife can go shopping." --Mike
"Ain't nothing like a guitar pick!" --Jake
"Yeah we do 1,2,3, headlights." --Mario
"Those guys are for sure, those guys, those guys are heroes. We're just trying to be." --Jake on Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire
"Apparently you haven't put a lot of bras on, Rami-- that's backwards! It'll be easy for me to get it off you later, though." --Jake
"It's always a bit of tough competition at these fairs... all the rides and all the pigs and the sheep." --Jake
"You can't possibly expect me to come up with something funny to say after every song! So in lieu of something funny, we'll play 'Laughing Out Loud.'" --Jake
"I heard this song on the radio-- I did. The band is familar and the song is familiar. For many of us and for most of us, the year will not be familiar." --Jake introducing "Tracks of my Tears" (which, as far as I can tell came out in or before 1965)
"Excuse me while I just adjust myself." --Jake while tuning his guitar
"I never mind being alone. A lot of times I crave solitude."
"Little Leaue is alot like life. A kid hits a home run and all the parents cheer him on. But when he strikes out, the parents say, 'he blew it.' The same things happen as an adult. Everyone rallies around you when you're up and leaves you when you're down."
"[Meeting the Clash was] probably the high point of my life."
"It's so hard to actually articulate what it is I want to say."
"The first line is 'People say I'm the life of the party.' Nobody ever said that about me. But that's what's beautiful about singing songs -- you get to play characters." --before "Tracks of my Tears"
"They always manage to spell my last name right." --on people misspelling his first name
"Uh. It's not the most comfortable thing in my life. But it doesn't really mean anything. It doesn't really matter. The band sure gets a good laugh out of it, anyway. I get on that tour bus at 2 a.m.--I'm not a sex symbol, I promise."-- on being called a 'sex symbol'
"I learned I was in love with this thing [Telecaster guitar which was stolen] that absolutely did not love me back. It couldn't give a shit who played it... I have great instruments now, and believe me, I don't want them to be stolen; but if they are, I'm prepared not to care." --on being detached from material possessions
"I was never a pain in the ass." --on his childhood
"I've been called stubborn before."
"No other topic thrills me as much as me. Let's talk about me."
"In L.A., people name their kids the craziest shit that has no foundation. I know some little kid named Rebel. When this person gets older and wants to know where his name came from..." --on why he's proud of his name's Jewish heritage
Bob (1977): "I mean, I don't consider myself . . . the life of the party."
Jake (1998): "The first line is 'People say I'm the life of the party.' Nobody
ever said that about me."
Bob (1975): "I'm not really very articulate.I save what I have to say for what I do."
Jake (1998): "It's so hard to actually articulate what it is I want to say."
"There are all different kinds of levels of it. When you go all the way and turn yourself inside out, you discover things. You write lines that you know are true, and then you realize why they're true."
"When I got to making this record [BDTH], I wrote about my life. And basically, my life was being told countless times that I was not very good, and that the songs were no good, the band was no good, and that there was no future in this thing. It was hard. There was a time there when it was embarrassing to say the Wallflowers were playing."
"I've never had a hard time with it. It's always been fairly easy. I can't say all the songs are good, but from the day I tried to write songs, I realized that I know how to put one together. Again, not that they're good, but I never had a hard time making them make sense within themselves, so I just kind of forged on through."
"Well certainly, songs that I write, I'm in a lot of those songs, of course. But there's little songwriter tricks, you dress yourself up as different people so you don't feel as wide open. I think songs that are 'I' 'I' 'Me' get kinda obnoxious after a while. So you invent little characters."
"Well because this record took four years to get to, I definitely had more than twelve songs!"
"That's what every writer always thinks, that the last song is the best one, you know, and that's why hopefully you try to surround yourself with people who can actually tell you which ones are the good ones. You think your last song is always the best one, and I've pretty much failed miserably with that idea so far. I don't mean that in actual context to this record. You just have to figure out that if you're the only one responding to it, then, the whole point is for people to hear it, not for you to just listen to it. If you want other people to hear it, you should pick the ones that people seem to respond to."
"Because the record took eight months, I kept writing. Not in hopes of like completing the record with new songs as much as I just kept writing, and if things were good, we'd try them."
"I wrote 'Invisible City' and 'I Wish I Felt Nothing' in the studio, and 'The Difference.' Those three songs were written knee-deep in recording."
"I think great songs can be about anything. I don't think they have to be things you've necessarily been through, or great trauma, or headaches, or confussion, or... you know it could be about anything. I like songs about cars and women, I think those are still great songs. There's a place for them all."
"That's only a small part of my life, making records for other people. I mean, songwriting isn't for record companies as much it is for yourself, whoever does it, you know."
"I've been writing songs I guess the last seven years or so. I tried to be a guitar player for a while and I failed miserably, so I branched out, and spread myself out, and started writing songs... So I haven't been writing that long." (1997)
"I tend to write too much, so I need someone to tell me, 'You don't need 12 verses in this song,' or 'This song's too slow,' or 'Sing in a higher register.'"
"I get asked about that song ("One Headlight") sometimes, and it's kind of... there's a line in the song just on the death of human law and that's just... I think I was probably feeling just, you know, frustrated... you think you do right, maybe good things will happen for you. Treat others like you want to be treated, and sometimes it just never seems to go that way. That's kinda what that song is about, I think. I'm waiting for the journalists to let me know for sure."
"This woman wrote a review. It wasn't a particularly good or bad review, but there's a song on the record called 'Invisible City,' and she said how she thought it was really arrogent of me to be from Los Angeles and sing a song about Los Angeles called 'Miserable City.' I thought, that's a good song too, 'Miserable City.'"
"I'd like what anybody wants, which is I like to write songs, and make music and play in this group, and I'd like to keep myself with a living doing that. That's the biggest I'm hoping for is I don't want 9-5 like anybody else, you know, have to put on a suit. One, I'm uneducated to do that! I'm under-qualified! But, you know, I'd like to do what anybody wants to do, and that's just be able to put food on the table by doing what I like to do. I feel pretty sucessful right now in just doing that. I've had a good time so far." --Jake