It is hard to play Blue Suede Shoes. I know everyone has heard it 10 million times, and that makes it even harder to play it, but there’s a very laid back tempo on that. I was surprised at how slow it really was. Brian Setzer Read Quote
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. Brian Setzer Read Quote
I wanted to go back to Sun. Unfortunately, most of the gear is gone from Sun. The way I take it now, it’s almost like a tourist destination. So, it would have been pretty difficult to have brought all the gear into Sun to make it like it was in the ’50’s. Brian Setzer Read Quote
I put a metronome up to all the songs, and I tried to really keep it true to the original tempos. Brian Setzer Read Quote
I didn’t want to take the guitar solos down note-for-note, but more or less use them as a map, and keep all the hooks from the guitar playing, and let myself come through. Brian Setzer Read Quote
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. Brian Setzer Read Quote
I basically sat down for a month, with all the Sun stuff I could find and just picked out my favorites. I didn’t think that they were indicative of ’54 to ’57, although I tried to stay within that period. Brian Setzer Read Quote
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. Brian Setzer Read Quote
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. Brian Setzer Read Quote
