Greg Prato > Quotes

“KURT DANIELSON: [Kurt Cobain] was the most gifted and cursed. And also the most ferocious, innocent, and nicest. A bundle of extremes and opposites.”
― greg prato, Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music

“TRACY MARANDER: [Kurt Cobain] was a really good artist. He would draw cartoons with funny sayings. I have this huge picture of this homeless guy, and it’s a satirical thing on how homeless people are mentally ill, they’re alcoholics, they had messed up childhoods — but they’re expected to fend for themselves in a box in the snow.”
― Greg Prato, Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music

“YANNI “JOHNNY” BACOLAS: I would always tell him, “Layne [Staley], why don’t you take off, go to some deserted island, hire the best counselors, and just kick this shit? Go for six months if you have to.” And his rebuttal was, “Johnny, I have celebrity status and I have a lot of money. I could fly planes out to deliver me the dope if I wanted to — and that’s what I would do. I can’t escape.”
― greg prato, Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music

“ROBERT ROTH: Going against the tide, no matter how gracefully, will beat you up after a while — all artists know this.”
― Greg Prato, Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music

“MARK ARM : Even if I did talk to [Layne Staley], I don’t know what I would have said. Seeing him so far down the line on this trajectory that he had set for himself made me queasy. It seemed to me like once he discovered heroin, he decided he was going to fully embrace it. Based on the songs on Dirt, he just jumped in. There was no turning back. It was unfortunate and pathetic. That was the myth he made for himself, and he was living it out.”
― Greg Prato, Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music

“NANCY LAYNE McCALLUM: An addict and a non-addict don’t think the same — their brains are wired completely differently. Only an addict can help another addict through recovery.”
― Greg Prato, Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music

“[The Real Thing]
But when it came time to Patton to lay down his vocals, Wallace was surprised to hear that Patton had opted to utilize a peculiar singing voice. Wallace: "He was singing really nasally and also, his pitch on record was not as good as I knew it could be. I was just like, 'Why don't you just hit the notes?' And he goes, 'No man, this is my style.' Because he'd sing the song on tape, and he'd do this amazing, really full voice. I'm like, 'That's the voice! Get that on the darn tape!' He was like, 'No man, I don't want to do it'.”
― Greg Prato, The Faith No More & Mr. Bungle Companion

“ALEX SKOLNICK:  There were a few songs at that time that really captured a Middle Eastern sound. The technical name of that scale is the harmonic minor scale. It was pretty new to rock, as far as I know. It snuck in a few times. Like, the Beatles song, "Girl," they snuck that in there. Then there was surf music - "Miserlou" had it. But just to hear hard rock with virtuosic guitar playing with that mode, it was a very cool thing. So, to me, "The Sails of Charon" really captured that. Ritchie Blackmore's "The Gates of Babylon" is another one.”
― Greg Prato, German Metal Machine: Scorpions in the '70s

“CHRIS CAFFERY:  I'd have to say that everybody's favorite old Scorpions song as a guitar player is "The Sails of Charon." That song is the one that you heard and you were like, "What the heck is this?!" Because it was trippy, it was different. The funny thing is if you ever look at the old interviews that Yngwie Malmsteen did, he never credited Uli - until recently. He used to say, "Oh, I did not know who Uli Roth was." And it's like, "Bullshit you didn't! You stole everything you ever did from him and Blackmore!" [Laughs]”
― Greg Prato, German Metal Machine: Scorpions in the '70s

“But we’ve got this guy, Sam Taylor, who used to work with ZZ Top.’ So, they sent Sam over to a rehearsal, and Sam said to us, ‘You guys are pretty good.’ He seemed not too impressed, but he was willing to work with us, and then he went home. His ex-wife later told me he thought he had found the greatest thing in the world—that he might have found ‘the next Beatles’ and they were going to get rich. [Laughs] But he didn’t tell us that.”
― Greg Prato, King's X: The Oral History

“King’s X didn’t fit into a nice, neat little package. Which I think that is the best thing in the world for a band, because that means you’re doing something you’ve never done before.”
― Greg Prato, King's X: The Oral History

“Jimmy Page was great, Eddie Van Halen was amazing -he re-revolutionized guitar, Randy Rhoads… I mean, from Neal Schon to Zakk Wylde, these guys are outstanding. But there’s nobody like Ritchie Blackmore -from stem to stern.”
― Greg Prato, The Other Side of Rainbow

“We knew a lot of Christians were starting to think we were a Christian band, and this was one of those songs that basically throws a wrench in it, and shows: ‘No. We’re questioners of all that. And want you to question it, too.”
― Greg Prato, King's X: The Oral History

“BRAD SMITH:  Music has an uncanny ability to mark periods of your life - like a milestone or a photo album. You hear three notes of your favorite album from ten years ago and you’re right there in your 1980 Honda Civic Wagon. It takes you back immediately. That’s the beautiful thing about music.”
― Greg Prato, A Devil on One Shoulder and an Angel on the Other: The Story of Shannon Hoon and Blind Melon