black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

We had cut ourselves free from the security of day-job life. The goals became primarily financial, at least for a while. That was the roughest time we had ever had as a band, because that was the first moment we realized that this was for real.

Ben Gibbard

For me, a song doesn’t really take flight until it has a lyric on it. …Without a lyric that I’m happy with, it could be the greatest song ever melodically or arrangement-wise, but it doesn’t have any resonance.
BEN GIBBARD

Song Wise Writing
As you go through your life, you make friendships, you break friendships, you have relationships. Music is the one thing I’ve always been able to rely on.
BEN GIBBARD

Friendship Make Relationship
Every record we do there are always two camps. There’s the camp that’s like, “I love it. It sounds different than the last one.”
BEN GIBBARD

Healthy People Thinking
We always idealize the past because we don’t feel the painful stuff the way we used to.
BEN GIBBARD

Feel Idealize Painful Way
Everybody has a language or code that they use with their wife or their girlfriend or boyfriend or what have you. It’s a language aside from the language they have with strangers.
BEN GIBBARD

Girlfriend Language Wife
To set the record straight for the God knows millionth time, we certainly didnt sign to Atlantic just for the money.
BEN GIBBARD

God Knows Money Records
I was literally just going and applying for jobs, and I couldn’t get a job, and I was getting more and more broke, and you find yourself groveling for jobs you don’t even want.
BEN GIBBARD

Finding Growth Jobs Yourself
I’m a war of head versus heart, it’s always this way. My head is weak, my heart always speaks, before I know what it will say.
BEN GIBBARD

Heart Love War
I kind of dropped a lot of bad habits about three years ago and became kind of accidentally straight-edge. I don’t have Xs on my hands, but I guess if I wanted to go back to calling myself straight-edge, I could.
BEN GIBBARD

Habit Kind Running
I’m starting to relate more to the late-period Kerouac stuff in the way that I once related to the fun and excitement of the early material. There’s a darkness inside of me that I’m only now starting to come to grips with and accept. And it’s starting to scare me.
BEN GIBBARD

Darkness Early Inside Material
I feel that we are currently living in a world that is similar to late ’50s, early ’60s kind of world.
BEN GIBBARD

Kind Late World
Because of my age and what I do for a living and the amount of time that I’ve spent away from my family and loved ones.
BEN GIBBARD

Age Darkness Fun
There were a lot of fences and walls existing in my life, literally and figuratively, and that was really not indicative of the kind of person that I’d always been. So, when I moved back to Seattle, the first thing I said was, “I will never live in fear again.”
BEN GIBBARD

Firsts Kind Wall
At this point in my life, I find myself obsessed with alternate paths I could’ve taken. I don’t think about this with a sense of regret, but with a sense of wonder.
BEN GIBBARD

Regret Taken Thinking
We had cut ourselves free from the security of day-job life. The goals became primarily financial, at least for a while. That was the roughest time we had ever had as a band, because that was the first moment we realized that this was for real.
BEN GIBBARD

Band Lease Life Primarily Security
I have always been very open and earnest about some things in my life, some things that are not directly in my life, but they’re twirling around me at the time.
BEN GIBBARD

Directly Earnest Itself Twirling
I think sometimes a narrative can come out of a single word.
BEN GIBBARD

Narrative Sometimes Thinking
I’m not like a 90-mph fastball kind of guy, but I can hit 70 on radar gun.
BEN GIBBARD

Baseball Gun Player
The Photo Album is the weakest record. For the first time in our careers, we found ourselves with an economic incentive to be on the road and to be making albums.
BEN GIBBARD

Cutting Home Real
We were playing Chinese restaurants and basements and record stores and houses. We were crashing on floors and it was all new and exciting. It was like a vacation. It didn’t feel like work.
BEN GIBBARD

Basement Exciting House Record Restaurant Vacation
When I listen to Airplanes record, it takes me back. I remember a lot of my thought processes when I was 20 or 21, writing those songs and recording that record.
BEN GIBBARD

Airplane Song Writing
I don’t spend my time perusing message boards to find out what people think about me or if people think my songs are good or if people love that lyric or this or that. I just want to be happy with it myself – and if other people like it, that’s great.
BEN GIBBARD

People Song Thinking
There are the people that are like, “I want it to sound like the last one.” You can’t please everybody all the time, but I think for the most part we tend to maintain a healthy level of self-reference to kind of make sure we continue to push things forward.
BEN GIBBARD

Everybody Life Like People Please
I’ve always had a soft spot for Phil Collins. He’s a great vocalist.
BEN GIBBARD

Great Spots Vocalist
I just rediscovered my guitar.
BEN GIBBARD

Guitar Life Rediscover
Hall & Oates is one of the few musical groups as satisfying now as it was back then. There’s something incredibly musically satisfying about their songs. Nothing has diminished my love for them.
BEN GIBBARD

Group Musical Song
You remember that stuff and laugh about it now. You don’t feel it the way you did back then when you were so scared and nervous and tired and hungry.
BEN GIBBARD

Back Hungry Laugh Nervous Remember Tired

We had cut ourselves free from the security of day-job life. The goals became primarily financial, at least for a while. That was the roughest time we had ever had as a band, because that was the first moment we realized that this was for real.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

We had cut ourselves free from the security of day-job life. The goals became primarily financial, at least for a while. That was the roughest time we had ever had as a band, because that was the first moment we realized that this was for real.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ben Gibbard Quotes