Vegas to me is a place like Hollywood or New York where you can walk around and people recognize you but it's like, hey, that's cool, and then we go on with our lives.
— Dusty Hill
We wrote ‘Tush' at a soundcheck in Alabama in about six or eight minutes.
Billy's an interesting guy. He's got a lot of varied interests.
I mean, rock 'n' roll is based on the blues, whether people want to know that or not.
Through the career, planned or unplanned - usually unplanned - we've taken different turns. And it's culminated in a worldwide following that's pretty substantial.
I just like to play and I'm always ready to be back onstage.
We were on the road playing when we started acquiring gold records.
Every album is unto itself, so whatever sounds we need to come up with, like way back when, we needed horns. So we invented the Lone Wolf Horns, and we learned how to play horns.
Being a musician in Texas had its own set of risks.
Even if I were to retire, I wouldn't shave. Everyone I know, including my wife, has never seen me without it.
I like to believe that I play bass like Dusty Hill, and that's something nobody else can do as well as me. I'm the best Dusty Hill I know.
When I was younger, I'd listen to a song and take it literally. I'd think, Boy, what a drag. How horrible, he must be really bummin'.
I love movies and I'm interested in watching how they're made and everything.
I'm a fan of Las Vegas and always have been, on many levels.
We got word that Mick Jagger heard our first album and liked it. And he wanted us to open for the Stones in Hawaii. That just blew us away. But the next thing I heard was that Stevie Wonder opened for them here in the States and actually got booed at one show. So I was scared to death.
Somehow it seems more clever to refer to something instead of saying it.
All we did was take what we were and brought it forward. We obviously had a great amount of pride in being from Texas.
We were bunched up with Southern bands, and there's nothing wrong with that at all. We just wanted to make it clear we weren't a Southern band.
I have no hobbies, other than I travel a little and shoot skeet once in a while. I don't even hunt anymore.
We all like each other. I know people ask us that, and I hate to disappoint them, but we get along great and we enjoy playing with one another, and what can I say? I'm as surprised as anyone else.
People are all the time telling me stories: they named their son after me, or more than likely their dog. Or they got a tattoo.
If we ever have a problem, it's not comin' up with ideas. It's stoppin' us.
My impression of Las Vegas was in the movies and on TV. So we were all gonna go see somebody perform - I can't recall who it was - and we went out and rented tuxedos because I thought that's what you did in Vegas.
I think life is there for you to grab it and be positive. Just look for the good everywhere.
I'd go over to friends' houses and ask them to put on some Howlin' Wolf, and they wouldn't know what I was talking about. Then, when they would come over to my house, I'd play them some blues. Their parents wouldn't let them come back. The blues were still called 'race records' back then.
Elvis Presley's Sun stuff - there's an album out in England with just about all those sides on it - you know, the sound of that upright bass slapping away: that's what I like to listen to. That and Richard Pryor, that is.
Legs' wouldn't be ‘Legs' unless it had that driving synth bass.
You don't have to play the blues to play rock 'n' roll, but that's where, somewhere along the line, your influences came from. I mean, I don't care where you got it from. If you got it from Eric Clapton, he got it from the blues.
When we did 'Eliminator,' at the time, it was experimental for us. It obviously turned out real successful, but at the time, we caught crap about it from some of our old fans. They thought we were deserting our roots or our old style or whatever.
I always had kind of a baby face, and when I started playing people didn't take me seriously.
I just love the idea of taking an elevator down to the stage, like Elvis did.
Eliminator' was a big, experimental thing.
If there are people who admire us and what we do, that's a huge compliment. As long as it doesn't get too crazy.
I don't know if it was a single-blade or one of those straight-edge razors, but I used to play in bands that were, like, show bands and would play different clubs, and, in those days, I would go to the barber twice a week.
I was 19 or 20 the last time I shaved.
My major influences were primarily guitar players and bands; I started playing bass by accident.
Actually, my mother turned me on to the blues. We had Lightnin' Hopkins as well as Elvis Presley records.
