Rick Nielsen Quotes

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Rick Nielsen

Profession : Musician

Birth : December 22, 1948

If you start having to tell people you're cool, you're not.

Rick Nielsen

Whenever we tell the truth, nobody believes us. We lie, and people take it as etched-in-stone fact.

Rick Nielsen

We're Cheap Trick, and the majority of people know about three songs, and the real huge fans know about eight. There are 292 songs people have never heard.

Rick Nielsen

Duane Eddy is somebody I wanted to play like. I discovered him before The Beatles, and he totally got to me. He sent me a note back in 1977 and said that he really liked what Cheap Trick were doing. That's one of those 'Wow!' moments, you know?

Rick Nielsen

Have a good work ethic. You've got to practice, practice, practice. I'm not telling you what to practice - that's up to you.

Rick Nielsen

I was the Richard Gere non-lookalike in Illinois.

Rick Nielsen

My parents were opera singers. I didn't want to play opera because I wasn't good enough. I didn't want to play their music; I wanted to play the music that I wanted to play, and I'm so lucky that today I get to play that music, even though I don't like every song I write.

Rick Nielsen

I did what I believed in. It got me in trouble, but it also got me a job.

Rick Nielsen

When a guitarist can evoke a certain mood through his playing, that's what's most important to me.

Rick Nielsen

Nobody wants to hear long speeches.

Rick Nielsen

Some people design buildings and aircraft carriers and cars - and I designed picks.

Rick Nielsen

I love guitars, and guitars love me, but sometimes they need new homes where they can live to rock another day.

Rick Nielsen

We played with Rush somewhere way early in our career.

Rick Nielsen

I like Harvey Mandel.

Rick Nielsen

I don't know any American rock bands.

Rick Nielsen

We all record together. We do it live; then, after that, we do overdubs, if we need to, to repair stuff. Usually when we do stuff, we have to make sure we get the bass and drums down, and by doing it live, you're actually playing the song. You're not piecing together a song.

Rick Nielsen

I never wanted to be Keith Richards or Jimmy Page.

Rick Nielsen

I'm kind of a goony guy, a dweeb or a geek.

Rick Nielsen

The way I look at it, I'm a songwriter that just happens to play guitar.

Rick Nielsen

When I write songs, it's just me and a cassette player - or at least it used to be before smartphones - to quickly record a basic idea.

Rick Nielsen