Butch Vig Quotes

• I made so many recordings with junky mics and crappy mixing consoles, you have to use what your tools are and in some ways that's been inspirational.

  Butch Vig

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

  8 Copy quote

• You need 10,000 hours to figure out how to be good at something and I agree with that to a certain extent. It's like everything you do to lead up to a great recording or great performance is everything you've done in the past and you can't just, it's rare that someone wakes up in a void and goes and wakes up and makes the most brilliant recording or performance.

  Butch Vig

  Past, Done, Wake Up

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

  7 Copy quote

• If you can just focus on creating your art whether that's music or writing a book or painting trust me it is really hard to balance that with a personal life. You have to be willing to sacrifice sometimes things in your personal life if your ultimate goal is to pursue things as an artist.

  Butch Vig

  Art, Book, Writing

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

  4 Copy quote

• I sort of feel I'm only as good as the last record I made. I was on as soon as I finish it I immediately put it aside and move on to the next project.

  Butch Vig

  Moving

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

  4 Copy quote

• I love analogue tape and I love digital, they both have pluses and minuses and I don't really feel like I have to use one or the other. I love digital because it's really great for songwriting because you can just cut and move choruses around and pull chunks of songs. It's really easy to hear quickly "Oh, maybe the arrangement should be like this."

  Butch Vig

  Song, Moving, Cutting

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think because I worked really hard before I had any kind of success it kept me grounded. You just don't know how long that success is gonna be there.

  Butch Vig

  Thinking, Long, Kind

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

  6 Copy quote

• What I love about analogue is it really forces you to go for a performance. I hear these young bands play perfect and they've been manipulated so much that there's not much personality to them. It's taken away some of the rawness and immediacy you get from a human performance.

  Butch Vig

  Taken, Perfect, Personality

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think the Cosmic Psychos were a band that was highly influential on the Seattle so called grunge scene. I know that Kurt and Nirvana were fans, they played shows with Pearl Jam. Even thou the Cosmic Psychos never had the commercial impact or success that those bands had, they were still a major influence on them, and I think a lot of it had to do with the spirit and the sound of their music.

  Butch Vig

  Thinking, Impact, Jam

  "Cosmic Psychos: Blokes You Can Trust". Music, www.imdb.com. 2013.

  5 Copy quote

• Compression is a necessary evil. The artists I know want to sound competitive. You don't want your track to sound quieter or wimpier by comparison. We've raised the bar and you can't really step back.

  Butch Vig

  Artist, Track, Evil

  4 Copy quote

• I'm constantly working on something new, whether it's a Garbage song, or for someone I'm producing or a song for film or TV whatever it is. I guess I'm sort of living in the moment and moving towards what I'm doing next. I think most artists are like that.

  Butch Vig

  Song, Moving, Thinking

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

  4 Copy quote

• Now with the world being such a global community, the way the Internet has sort of leveled the playing field because you have so many things that are instantly accessible. It used to feel that way though, this outside pressure that you had to go to New York or LA or actually Nashville if you're into country music to succeed. But obviously we didn't and I didn't move to LA til after I had established us. I think it's easier for people to do it these days just because of the global world we live in.

  Butch Vig

  Country, Moving, Thinking

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think also just being from the Midwest, my dad was a stoic Midwesterner, he always told me never take anything for granted and you have to work for what you get so. That's funny because my friend Frank Anderson said something really funny he goes, "A lot of the people from the midwest are the laziest shits I've ever met." And he's right. I know some. You can't say its a stereotype that only people from the Midwest are that way because there are definitely people I know who hate to work and just want to hang out and drink beer.

  Butch Vig

  Dad, Hate, Beer

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

  4 Copy quote

• All music done, as I said, through low res mp3 and $5 earbuds and so I think as a producer or a band you want your music to sound good in that medium. Sometimes when I'm doing a mix I'll listen to it on my laptop, on the crappy speakers on my laptop. It lets me know what the tracks gonna sound like if someone else listens to it that way.

  Butch Vig

  Thinking, Track, Done

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm a gear head. I love gear. If I have the choice, of course I'd rather use a great microphone, a Neumann microphone and a vintage Neve board.

  Butch Vig

  Choices

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

  4 Copy quote

• If I had had success when I was early twenties I'm sure I would have lost my mind, I would've just partied like crazy and probably blown everything I had.

  Butch Vig

  Crazy, Mind

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

  4 Copy quote

• There weren't even cell phones when we started Garbage, we'd have to pull over to the side of the road and use a payphone to call the venue to make sure you knew where you were going and now of course everything is completely changed.

  Butch Vig

  Cell Phone, Changed

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

  4 Copy quote

• I found when we released Not Your Kind of People it was hard for me to go back on tour, especially when we had some runs that were 7 or 8 weeks in a row and I wouldn't see my family the whole time. It has gotten easier with the internet you know because you can Skype or get on Facetime and connect with your family. It was much harder to do that when we started Garbage 20 years ago.

  Butch Vig

  Running, People, Kind

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'd work on Garbage or I'd edit a song or writing here, but I was able to do a lot of things with my family. There are things outside of Garbage, the whole band has come to realize that we need things like that. That's why we took that break. Garbage had swallowed us up and had become a full time obsession for us and we needed to escape that and reclaim our old lives.

  Butch Vig

  Song, Writing, Obsession

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

  4 Copy quote

• The first Garbage record sounds bizarre, it's not a pristine sounding album. We ran everything through stomp boxes and through samplers and that definitely gave it a vibe.

  Butch Vig

  Bizarre, Ran

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm trying to be present in my daughters life as much as I can. I didn't have any kids or really any family. I have a family but I just dove into work 1,000%. I think as an artist when you're young like that, when you move into your 30's or 40's if you have time to focus on that you need that time. It's part of that.

  Butch Vig

  Daughter, Moving, Kids

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

  4 Copy quote

• It's funny, I don't really feel that nostalgic. I only recently started putting up some photos from some of the sessions I've done over the years and some of the Garbage sessions because my daughter, who's 10-years-old, when she was about 6 or 7 she was more curious about what I do. I have all these platinum records and stuff, they've all just been in boxes in storage for years but I started just digging through those things because I sort of want her to be aware of my past. I never really put the old recordings on and listen to them and go, "Oh that sounds great."

  Butch Vig

  Daughter, Past, Done

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

  4 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Shirley Manson

Dave Grohl

Krist Novoselic

Billy Corgan

Chad Channing

Steve Albini

Taylor Hawkins

Kurt Cobain