Explore Quotes by Brian Setzer

I love Glen Campbell. He never gets a mention.

I started a big band when grunge was popular. I mean, that didn't make much sense.

Just because you put super great musicians together, it doesn't mean you're going to have that chemistry as a band.

We weren't afraid to mix some crazy styles into the standard rockabilly look. We also took a lot of different musical influences that were part of that era.

I like a good pompadour.

Robert Plant is one of the nicest people you'll ever meet, never mind rock star. He's so down to earth.

Rock and roll and swing never quite mixed. Rock and roll came in and just blew everything out of the water. Big bands were dead.

I always thought when I hit 50 years old that'd be it for the travel. I don't have to tell you - you wait at an airport, your flight's delayed, get on a 14-hour flight, get off, get stuck in traffic, you get to the hotel and the room service is closed.

A lot of people put all that stuff on a pedestal, and they won't touch it. But I don't think that's the reason they did that. I think they played that stuff out of pure joy.

Elvis is not so difficult as Johnny Cash because his voice is so distinctive. If you try to copy Johnny Cash, it's just going to sound dumb.

If you listen to everybody's opinions, I mean, I always say I'd be digging a ditch on the side of the road now if I had listened to what everybody told me what to do. You know, you have to follow your heart, you have to.

To me, rockabilly music paralleled punk's energy and feeling, but the players were much better.

I got cat class and I got cat style

... so much of what we do now started in 1954 at Sun Records in Memphis Tennessee ... those guys were inventing that stuff (Rock & Roll) ... you can really tell on some tracks ... they were actually afraid at times of what they were playing. But Rock & Roll definitely didn't come before that time; it started right there

,,, all around it would have to be Eddie Cochran, because it wasn't just music with him; it was his guitar playing, his look, his singing, I'd say that, all things considered, he's probably my favorite "cat" of all time

Rock & Roll is the physical thing that just comes out of you .. the other stuff you have to sit down and learn .. once you learn scales and chord progressions, you can make up your own versions

I don't think there is a musician today that hasn't been affected by Elvis' music. His definitive years - 1954-57 - can only be described as rock's cornerstone. He was the original cool.

Elvis Presleys' first album had more energy and more enthusiam than any other album at the time - when it was released it just blew everything else out. It changed the whole landscape of music

With the Stray Cats at least, we really took the music somewhere else. First, we wrote our own songs. That's a real weak point in modern classics if you do rockabilly or blues.

You had to pick something like Blue Suede Shoes because it's the flagship of the Sun label, but then I wanted to dig down and find something like Rakin' and Scrapin'.

The jazz chord substitutions in a country song... that was another thing that bent people's ears. I guess that my favorites are the unique ones. It's not how fast you play. It's that unique blending of different stuff I'm most proud of.