Brian Setzer Quotes

I'm not God's gift to rockabilly. There's great players out there, and some of them deserve a lot more than they've gotten.

I like a good pompadour.

Since the big band started I'm just always swamped with movies and things. It certainly pays the bills and it's very satisfying, because I get to write all these big charts and all this crazy music.

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.

I love Glen Campbell. He never gets a mention.

Mark Winchester has left the band. He's decided that he's tired of the road and just wants to concentrate on his career in Nashville. I don't blame him at all. He'll certainly be missed.

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.

The biggest challenge for me was Get Rhythm. I don't know why.

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 can't tell you how many people have asked me to show them Stray Cat Strut and that little diminished run on the C. I guess my brain is wired backwards. I don't know what possessed me to do that, but I did.

It's really funny, I think to myself ... I've got my same guitar and amp, it's just a bigger room now! Some things don't change.

Veteran performers are dying off, and new acts simply aren't emerging on the national scene.

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.

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.

Don't be afraid to take liberties with this music. Try and put some of yourself into it.

There's a fine line between pleasure and pain. Love me like a ball and chain.

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.

As a genre, rockabilly's post-Elvis profile has seldom been lower in the United States. Many labels that produced fresh bass-slappin' sides during the '90's are now out of business.

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'.

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

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.

McCartney! Haven't met him and haven't played with him. I would LOVE to. He needs to make a kick-ass rockabilly record.

To keep creating something with this type of music, you have to take it out of the box.

The songwriting has never really stepped forward from the '50's.