For a while there I wasn't sure that anybody cared about being the best at anything, and it's nice to have a group of guys that feel like we're doing it for the cause. Maybe we're just really young and naive for thinking music can matter, but it does to us.
Ryan Ross
Dropping the exclamation point was our way of drawing a line in the sand. We have a new record and we feel like a new band. We were all tired of it, and we went ahead and got rid of it.
I always said as long as I had enough money to feed myself and have a place to eat then I'd be doing music.
I've gotten to see the world and play music with my friends.
Some people would say Counting Crows or Third Eye Blind would be a guilty pleasure, but they're two of my favorite bands - I'm not ashamed of it.
I'm usually the bad guy. That's how it always seems to be.
Whenever I'd go anywhere with my dad - in his 1980 burgundy Dodge Ram - he'd always listen to mix tapes of country-music stars like Garth Brooks, Clint Black and Willie Nelson. Those were the first songs I ever learned the words to.
I forgot that being in a band was this much fun.
When we were writing for Panic whether we knew it or not, having that name over the songs we were trying to do made me second guess things and change things. I started to go against my instincts.
We were in this park in Canada throwing a frisbee around, and there was a homeless guy there who swore to God I was Mick Jagger. I kept telling him I wasn't, and he kept thinking I was Jagger and wanted to play frisbee with us. Then he heard a siren coming and thought I called the cops - and he ran away!
And my biggest revelation that will never be beaten is the Beatles. I couldn't believe that I'd gone my whole life without knowing all those songs.
That's the funny thing - if there was a year and half or two years of us being a band like every other band and then getting signed, we would probably have made 'Pretty. Odd.' as our first album instead.
We got really excited by Motown and early '60s soul music that was fun sounding.
Keith Richards has some sort of quote that says 'it takes two people to write a song,' and I'm of that school of thought, too.
Brendon has always been a fan of pop music, but that's such a broad term, because I guess I would say I would be too, but in a different way.
I don't understand why Brandon Flowers keeps taking shots at us. Maybe he feels threatened, but he seems to be doing just fine on his own. It's pretty dumb. I mean, we're from the same town, and we've never met him.
Fever' was good for how young we were, but for me it's kind of like a yearbook picture. You look at it like, 'Oh, man, that's the suit I was wearing?'
People have taken technology so far, to the point where music is almost sterile these days.
In Japan, the way they act at shows is very different from home because they don't yell, they clap for about 10 seconds after the song and then it's completely silent.
I'd never really travelled before, and when we started going places, like Japan, France, Germany and all over Europe, it's been interesting to see how different cultures work. But to be there playing music makes it so much better.
What we've realized is, for us to be happy for the long haul, we have to keep doing what we want to do, or else we won't want to play music with each other anymore.
When I was about six, I was kind of a cowboy. I'd dress up in boots, straps, hat and bandanna, and my dad would take us to the rodeo.
Don't get me wrong, The Beatles are one of our all-time favourite bands, but there's a lot more we were influenced by.
That was something we were trying to figure out: Are we allowed to do a jazz song? Are we allowed to do cabaret? Just from hearing the Beatles, it was like, 'Well, they did it. It's okay to write something other than a standard rock song.'
Some of our favorite bands are, like, Third Eye Blind and Counting Crows, and stuff like Danny Elfman and Jon Brion movie scores.
We never set out to be this punk rock band that's going to stay small and tour in a van forever. We wanted to take our band to a level where we could do everything we want to do.
Brendon's more of a Peter Gabriel fan, and I'm more of a Ray Davies fan.
We've got a younger fan base - and their parents. One day when we were at Abbey Road, an entire family was outside waiting for us - like, a nine-year-old, a 16-year-old, and their mother. They can agree on liking us for whatever reason. It's kind of strange.
Brendon just likes to make a scene sometimes.
I can't expect everybody to appreciate what we do. Our stage shows especially have been kind of polarizing. Either you went with it or you didn't, and you thought we were being pretentious. Personally, I think it's kind of boring when I watch a band that doesn't do anything to make it their own.
I was really into Blink-182 and punk bands like NOFX and MXPX.
We all like all of that, from 'Rubber Soul' to 'The White Album' and all of that, but even before, we were into that theatrical element of things. We didn't want to do a 'Sgt. Pepper's' thing.
After bands become successful, they always make that choice to do the record about how cool or how hard it is to be in a successful band.
I just couldn't keep on trying to please people. It was hindering my creative output, and I had to be honest with myself.
I think that everybody kind of changes a lot between the time they're seventeen and when they're twenty-one or twenty-two.
It's hard when people are expecting things from you, and all you're trying to do is write songs that you like for yourself.
I've noticed that things aren't bad all the time. So I've tried to write songs that people will want to hear when they're getting off work rather than something that's going to bring them down.
I don't think I listen to anything that I did when I was 17. I've changed a great deal.
Even when we were stuck touring, earning $100 a day, I never thought I'd even make it that far.
It's nice to be home - I go to the same old sandwich shop around the corner, I go to the movies, I do what I like to do.
I know as far as I'm concerned, I'm getting really excited about writing, and I'm taking guitar and vocal lessons.
I've been studying people - a homeless guy in Scotland, a blind accordion player in London - and they've inspired the lyrics I've been writing.
You don't realise how long three years is until you go away and write an album.
Sometimes I'm not as open to loving.
To be honest, the search for a label was really weird, because some of the labels that you wouldn't expect to care about stuff like radio formats were the ones that did care. They were like, 'Yeah, we love this record, but what are we going to play on the radio?' And I was like, 'You don't have bands on the radio.'
When I started playing music, all I was hearing was whatever was on the radio.
We wanted to grow, and we were really over the circus theme at that point. We went out in the woods and got new clothes and all grew beards.
It's like Christians who want to be like Jesus. We're just trying to follow in someone's footsteps. Might as well be The Beatles.
Everything is so computerized these days and it's all edited and everything. Everything sounds so perfect, and we just want to be a band that sounds like a band.
I would never have thought I would see Axl Rose, someone who was so important to rock 'n' roll.
