Riff Quotes

For me, the music dictates the melody. Give me a riff to sing over, you know?

As a writer, I find it very satisfying when a lyric suddenly ties together more neatly than you expected it to. But for the listener, hearing a good lyric is not generally as exciting as hearing a great beat or a great riff or a great melody or even a distinctive singing voice for the first time.

The first thing that was intimidating was when I started rehearsing to play Riff in the London company. That first day of rehearsal, I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m never going to learn this. I’m too slow.’

Well, I think writing is basically about time and rhythm. Like with jazz. You have your basic melody and then you just riff off of it. And the riffs are about timing.

I got really hooked on this riff in the middle of this song called ‘Minor Miracles’ by my friend Eric Johnson from Fruit Bats. I got the tracks for that from him, and that turned into ‘Here in Spirit.’

‘Boogie Chillen’,’ by John Lee Hooker – that is a riff.

In OK Computer, the guitar was already moving towards a tone generator as well as a riff generator.

I saw a band called The Electric Guitars, from Bristol. I described them to Roland, and he just started playing a riff on guitar and said, ‘Do they sound like this?’ And they did.

A guitar riff played on a piano doesn’t come close to the purity of it being played on a guitar but I faked it enough to get by.

The worst thing to happen at the Oscars would be if nothing happened. You want something unscripted, something to riff on, something kinda out there.

You really have to play with the space in a riff so it can be allowed to breathe.

I was just obsessed with soul singers who had these big powerful voices. I used to listen to Aretha, Whitney, Mariah and try and imitate them, note for note and riff for riff.

If you take the riff from the song ‘Cowboys From Hell’ and really break it down, it’s almost a hillbilly guitar riff: dekka dekka dekka dekka dekka dekka dekka dek.

There’s such a huge difference between a great arrangement of riffs and a song. Sometimes the two can be the same. But the difference is a song doesn’t necessarily need a riff, whereas a riff doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve got a good song on your hands.

To be a truly conscientious artist, you have to look at what’s not working and challenge it. You riff on things.

If you improvise a riff and the crowd immediately reacts to it, you know you’re on to something.

I’m dying to fool around with the distance between Selina Kyle and Catwoman. And, you know, the whole double identity thing is endlessly fascinating. I mean, you can always find another riff for it.

No one in the world can beat Ella Fitzgerald as a riff singer.

When I got into songs like ‘Exist,’ I was like, ‘Okay, this riff has some bass sweeping in it, I’m definitely going to have to use a pick… but I guess I’ll have to learn how to sweep first!’

Creating a dance is like coming up with a Chuck Berry riff.

I think you can hear the Delta blues thing in something like the intro to ‘Heaven in This Hell,’ which has that down-home acoustic riff.

One thing will lead to another and somebody will come up with a riff or a line or something we build from.

I am never happy with what I do, so I try not to watch stuff that is filmed with me in it because I am always like, ‘Oh, I could have done that a little bit better,’ or, ‘I could have done that differently – that riff could have been a little better.’

I like to decide the night before Thanksgiving that I’m gonna do it, and I’ll see what riff raff is around. Then I get that last-minute surge of energy. But if I had two weeks to plan, sometimes I wish I wasn’t doing it. But very seldom does that happen.

‘Back In The Saddle’ – I never realised what a good riff that was, or at least how much it satisfied me. And when we play it live, it comes across much better than I ever expected it to.

I’m an American designer. It’s important to riff on that. I remember, when my mom and I first came to the States, she was so shocked that everyone was so dressed down in sandals and shorts. It’s not quite like that in Asia. To give that a superluxurious makeover? For me to make street wear? It’s sort of chic to do it.

I came to work one day, and Ricky was playing music on his guitar, just snickering. He played me the riff that turned out to be ‘Rock Lobster,’ and it was hilarious. He was just trying to be funny. His guitar style made it moodier, and it really is a driving song, but it does have that funny humor to it.

Whenever anyone sends me a link to a band, saying, ‘These guys sound exactly like Soundgarden,’ it’s always some super simple sludge riff with a singer that sings high and screechy. And it’s really awful.

One day, I was just fingering around on the keys of a Fender Rhodes piano, and I came up with this little riff, and all of a sudden, it morphed into a song. It had never been touched by a guitar, which was very weird for us. ‘Under the Ground’ is the first song I have ever written that had nothing to do with the guitar.

Comedians are really writers who don’t have pens and pencils about them, but they riff.

Sometimes one of us will have a riff or a bass line from home but it really gels when we come together. We really have a strong special chemistry that we take advantage of when we get together.

I sleep music. I wake up, and there’s a riff in my head. Every step I take, there’s a riff, a beat, or something.

Of all the things I’ve done, the first ‘Strongman’ story was one of the easiest things to write. It was almost fully formed from the get-go. It’s almost a ‘Dark Knight Returns’ riff, except you have a battle-worn Mexican wrestler instead of Batman.

There was no better entrance in history than The Ultimate Warrior. It was the greatest entrance between the music that had that guitar riff, and that face paint, and the tassels, and the gear. It was the greatest!

Rob Thomas, the Action Bronson and the Riff Raff. Both the musicians, they know who I am and they know I come from oldest country in the world and if I want my words like the music. I forever love them like the Frank Sinatra.

Songs are out there – they’re waiting to be grabbed. I start with a phrase, musical and lyrical, words like ‘I don’t think so’ and a nice riff. It rolls from there.

To me and my band, guitar riffs are what it’s all about. We know that every time we jam on a great riff, we’ve got a fighting chance of writing a great song!

I think people will always love a heavy Sabbath riff because it’s fundamental to rock.

Nothing unifies people more than music, more than that universal riff. The one thing that unifies us and the hope that we can have, especially being an artist, is that we can create music that can build bridges and smash down very bad ideas.

My first instrument was bass, and the first thing that I remember learning to play that was better than a few notes was Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain.’ If you’re the guy who penned that bass riff, then you should probably be in some sort of fantasy band.

If there is one thing that makes me unique, it’s that I riff a lot.

With Rage, we wrote riff rock and had rap vocals, so we didn’t really concern ourselves with melody for the most part.

‘The Cabin at the End of the World’ is my riff on the ‘home invasion’ subgenre of horror/suspense. Hopefully it’s a big, loud, dark riff.

I’ve never been known as a riff kind of artist.

When the Beatles wrote ‘Paperback Writer,’ it couldn’t have been the same old thing. You can hear so many influences in it, from the blues to Bach, and it’s not just verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge chorus. They start off singing a cappella, almost like a Bach chorale, and the song goes into this bluesy guitar riff.