I'd rather be musical than technical.

I can't stand it when groups come back for an encore, and they play some slow thing. Oh, brother! It's like, 'Had I known that, I would've left.'

Our band is rock n' roll. We were never just a studio band trying to make everything perfect. It was never supposed to be perfect. It was supposed to be cool.

We played with AC/DC. There are actual recordings of us doing 'Johnny B Good' together.

I have too many options when it comes to guitars.

I've taken all the mirrors out of my house because when I'm playing onstage, I feel like I'm still in high school. I feel like that kid that wanted to play in his first band, and then I look in a mirror, and it's like, 'Uh-oh!' It ain't pretty.

People are like, 'Why are you playing that five-neck guitar?' I want to hurt. I want to play.

Some people collect this or that. I'm a musician; I collect guitars.

It's an honor that people give a crap about us. We're in a rock band; we're not supposed to be treated with any respect.

I have four warehouses full of stuff. I have every boarding pass of every flight I've ever been on. I have all the old contracts that we had from all the clubs and concerts we played, every one of them, up from 1980. Guitar picks and amps - it goes on and on.

We're a band's band. We have real songs, real players, real problems. Real ups, real downs.

We may not be proud of every song we've ever done - or been forced to do - but I believe we've done more than meets the eye.

We tried to act trendy. We took one of our songs and tried to make a dance mix. They put it on the turntables, unannounced, in Los Angeles and New York the same weekend, where they had a big dance crowd going wild. It cleared the floor on both coasts.

There's no way we could make up what we are. The group is just what everyone is. Each of us has a different audience.

No one knows this, but when I would play the clubs back in '65, '66, they used to call me 'Screaming Chicken,' 'cause I would go out and scream, fall on the ground, beat myself, smash stuff, jump through the ceiling, roll on the floor, and act like I was having epileptic fits.

To me, a day off is sitting at a piano or with a guitar and writing.

I think every one of our songs could be a Top 10 record.

I don't like the term 'rock star.'

We're known as a touring band, not a singles band.

I'd rather be known as a songwriter than a guitarist, although I love to play the guitar.

One reason I rarely listen to radio is they don't play our music much.

I don't always feel like a million dollars, but I try not to let anybody know.

People say, 'Oh, Rick, he's crazy.' Well, I'm crazy, and I'm not crazy... When I went to my high school reunion, I was the only one there doing what he said he was going to do. How crazy is that?

Playing in Japan for thousands of people was like playing on the moon.

I was always the wise guy class clown throughout my childhood.

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band - those guys were great.

I always thought of myself as more of a rhythm player than a big soloist.

Whenever we tell the truth, nobody believes us. We lie, and people take it as etched-in-stone fact.

I feel like such an idiot... you know, that our band didn't break up just so we can re-form and become more and more popular.

I started out as a drummer, and when I was 9, my drum teacher had an album out. He was the rudiment king! He signed it for me, 'Rudimentally yours, Frank Arsenault.' How cool is that?

I didn't want to be one of the Beach Boys or one of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah band. I mean, we appreciated that music. But I didn't want to grow a beard to look like Roy Wood just because I liked him.

I love to be the loudest thing in the room.

We're Cheap Trick, and the majority of people know about three songs, and the real huge fans know about eight. There are 292 songs people have never heard.

My parents were opera singers. I didn't want to play opera because I wasn't good enough. I didn't want to play their music; I wanted to play the music that I wanted to play, and I'm so lucky that today I get to play that music, even though I don't like every song I write.

If you start having to tell people you're cool, you're not.

I don't know any American rock bands.

When I write songs, it's just me and a cassette player - or at least it used to be before smartphones - to quickly record a basic idea.

I could have moved anywhere I wanted to. But for family reasons, I stayed in the Midwest.

We've got the pretty-boy lead singer and the fat, dumpy drummer, and I'm the zany guitarist. Sure, we've played up the image at times. But it's the music that matters most.

I never tried to emulate The Beatles, and I never really wanted to be like The Rolling Stones. I never really felt that I had the look or the demeanor of veteran musicians.

There's no rush to ever put out a new Cheap Trick record. We put it out when we feel like it.

I'm a normal person. I don't see where people come off saying I'm crazy.

We're basically a rock band - guitar, bass, drums and vocals. But we take it further than that. We can be rotten, dirty, and heavy as anyone, but at the same time, we've got a lot of melody.

Look at Bob Dylan: his voice is not a great sound, but it gets the idea across... and that is what's really important.

I actually did try to emigrate to Australia a long time ago.

We played with Rush somewhere way early in our career.

We all record together. We do it live; then, after that, we do overdubs, if we need to, to repair stuff. Usually when we do stuff, we have to make sure we get the bass and drums down, and by doing it live, you're actually playing the song. You're not piecing together a song.

You've got to work hard and have luck. Luck only enters in if you do work hard.

We toured with Deep Purple a number of times.

We played New Year's Eve in Los Angeles, maybe 1978, opening for Kansas or somebody. Driving to the hotel after the gig, we came on KLOS. It was like, 'All right! We're in L.A., we just played a big gig, and we're on the radio!' That was the start of something big.