I like to see other bands, and I like to hear their songs, but I really like it when they engage the audience.

In rock n' roll, there are notes that aren't like notes. They're something in between, and it's the way you scoop into it.

Musicals weren't on my radar.

I'd say that 98 percent of the bands we've played with through the years have either broken up or are stuck in some kind of '80s revival now.

I just write the way I feel, and if it feels good to me, hopefully everybody likes it.

I love my band. I love to play. I love to write.

When it comes to writing musicals, you write the best piece you can. Then, its destiny is in the hands of the actors and the director.

When you're on tour with the band, it's a different mentality. You don't sightsee because you're making sure you can do the show. But in musicals, I don't have to sing or play: I just have to use my brain, and the rest of the time, I'm free.

The American Music Awards mean more to us; that's a people's award, and we're a people's band. The Grammys are the critics.

We've always been just an American rock n' roll band.

Most of Broadway is based on a movie or a book. You don't see many original musicals.

When I'm writing Broadway, it's for a character, a man, a woman, an old guy, a kid. In the band, you're talking in your own voice in the lyrics, saying what you think or feel. On Broadway, you're expressing that through a character.

Every time you're on stage, you look out at a packed house, people all the way up to the top, people having a blast, everybody forgetting about the world for a couple hours. That's a special thing.

I'm a good Jewish boy from Edison, New Jersey, so I went and saw 'Fiddler on the Roof' because you have to: that's part of your bar mitzvah experience.

Some I want to see just for curiosity. But no, I don't really rush out to see a bunch of musicals.

A musical is really one of the most complicated beasts. It's a play, and there's music... and there's dancing... it's unbelievably satisfying to get something up out of your brain onto a piece of paper ... and start the process and then see it on the stage.

Most theatre people and composers are like research hounds.

We never do the same set twice.

We never do the same set twice... We play for at least two and a half hours, sometimes longer, so there's a lot of songs from all the records. And we know there's a stable we as fans would want to hear, so we always give them, then we change up a bunch of songs and throw in a couple new ones.

When I was growing up, I had more comedy albums than musical ones. George Carlin, Cheech and Chong, Steve Martin, Richard Pryor - those were my main men.

I'm in a very successful band. We all love each other. It ain't ever breaking up. I also have a terrific hobby that became a full-time job. My only problem? There's not enough time to sleep in my world.

There's no way you can imagine going from kids in high school to being the best band in the world.

How do we keep it up? Because that's what we do; we're musicians, and we love to play and make music. And with every album, we get better, and with every tour, we get better.

I'm not a guy who grew up in theater. I've always played in rock bands.

We keep trying to get better - constantly working at it. We love to tour. I love to play in front of people. You sit there, and everybody's smiling, and you're smiling. It's a good time.

Glass and wearable technology is an example of another step in consumer-facing innovation that will change how we share the music experience with our fans in the future.

We've always been a band of the people, and we will always remain a band of the people.

I'm going to stop when I'm 100. I put a limit on myself.

My father was a very big musical influence on me. He was a trumpet player. And that's what I started with. Then, when I was 7, my parents introduced me to the piano.

We started out a long time ago, and we've managed to just keep writing current songs and have No. 1 current records.

I don't like it when bands don't want to play that one song everybody wants to hear. I think that's cheating everybody, and I think it's selfish of an artist to do that.

We've been here since 1983 as a band.

When we get on stage, naturally, you just get out there and work it as hard as you humanly possibly can do it.

It's a sense of pride, a sense of you set out to get a record deal, and we got that. We set out to get a No. 1 record, and then we got that. Then you say, 'Wow, that was impossible and now even more impossible is to stay No. 1 and stay current and put out new records that people care about,' and we really stuck to that.

We really earned our keep by going door to door, going to every town, playing in every club.

We would say we would play every pay toilet and use our own change. Across America and across the world, we just kept going and going.

I remember, when I was very young and going to the Fillmore East and watching three of my favorite bands in one night, I'd want a hit. I want to hear the songs that brought them to that pinnacle of success.

We love to make records, and we love to tour.

One of the greatest things about our band is that we bring the American dream to the world. Here's a bunch of kids that were living in nowhere New Jersey, and we made it through a lot of practice and a lot of work and a lot of luck. It shows the world, 'If we did it, you can do it.'

I don't find writing for the theater that different from writing a rock song.

Whether you're black or white, you're a human - and that's what matters.

Our job is to be performers and give everybody a great night where they can forget about their problems and the world's problems, because they're always going to be there. They were there since the beginning, and they're going to be there until the end.

We play anywhere around two, 2 hours, so we're always in shape, but you've got to get yourself in super shape so you can sing that long, play that long, and feel strong.

People ask me, 'Is there pressure to win a Tony for your next one?' I've got three on my mantelpiece; I'm good. If that's the end of the story, I'm fine.

The wild thing is that when I'm in the band, I can control my destiny with four other guys. As a composer sitting in the audience, you can throw good vibes at everybody, but you can't control anybody's destiny, so it's really unsettling.

Every time we do a new record, we do the best we can. For us, every record is stepping into the ring with another heavyweight champion.

We thought the hardest thing in the world was to get a record deal, then the hardest was to get a No. 1 record, and then the hardest thing is to stay at the top. It's a lot of work.

There's trials and tribulations in a band.

Usually for the tour, there's about 80 songs in our brain.

We have to play 'Livin' on a Prayer,' 'Bad Medicine.' We have to play them, and we want to play them, and that's what we're supposed to do. It's like going to see The Beatles and them not playing your favorite song. It's not the right thing to do.