John Gourley Quotes

My first concert was Pantera.

Portugal. The Man, to me, doesn’t have any real ties. We try to change things up with every album, really progress, and let things happen.

I like work, I like song writing, and I like the history of Atlantic Records. They’ve sat in the studio with so many artists – like Ray Charles, for example – and created something amazing. As a label, they seem to be great at growing bands rather than telling you how to do it.

When I was in high school and first starting to drive by myself, I listened to Wu Tang in the car, and I recognized their soul and R&B roots.

Some New York bands you’ll see rocking Ones or Dunks and things like that, but it is weird that the sneakerhead thing has become so massive. Personally, I think it’s really silly.

Levis are my go-to. Plain crew necks and jeans.

If you don’t have negative experiences, you have no way to gauge the positive ones, and you have no way to deal with it.

When I talk to my mom and dad, and I’m in Paris, I’m like, ‘Can you believe it?’ It’s ridiculous. I have a serious love for what we do. It’s not something we take for granted.

For the people that don’t know it, we’ve had members come and go from this band since the beginning. It’s always been about collaboration, and it’s been about just playing music with our friends.

My favourite piece of music is actually ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ as a whole. For me, it’s the most perfect and brilliant example of rock song writing.

I like the challenge of writing music without being the coolest guy or band in the room.

I feel like every album we make, that’s our debut album.

It’s really hard to escape where you were brought up. Not that I would ever want to escape it.

Portland is where all the fringe groups went to escape. Where the outliers brought that DIY, punk rock attitude and made the city their own.

I’ve never been the type of person that puts things on a shelf or, like, needs to clean my sneakers every day. I just wear what I like.

You can never predict a hit.

We lived out in the middle of nowhere – the most random places – because of my father’s work. We spent a lot of time in the car on long drives, just to get anywhere. We listened to oldies rock on the car radio, and the most-played group on oldies rock radio is the Beatles.

There are some athletes who I feel like are just looking for likes, and then there are people who are just real.

I’m just not into the shady side of the music industry. Give credit where credit’s due.

Portugal is like Ziggy Stardust. The period is there, so you know that it’s not the country, it’s Portugal. The ‘Man’ states, ‘He’s the man.’

Money messes up everything. It ruins art. The second you start putting price tags on this stuff, it’s… Art isn’t for just the wealthy. It’s for everybody to enjoy.

The whole band is from Alaska. It’s like growing up anywhere else.

I think we’re pretty spiritual people, the band in general. We’re not a bunch of hippies or anything like that, but we like to work together and work with people. We believe that positive energy is pretty necessary in life, although it’s not always easy to maintain.

We’ve always done what we do, and we go out and try and get better with each record we make.

The worst gift I have ever gotten on Christmas is going to see Tim Allen in ‘The Santa Clause.’

I’ve never been to a beach party before. We have gravel-pit parties in Alaska.

I bought a book with guitar tabs and forced myself to learn. I would go to school and then come home and sit in my room for hours figuring out the songs.

Miles Davis and Felonious Monk, they’re both great artists who enhance things.

To me, sci-fi has the most amazing style.

My dad just decided that he wanted to race sled dogs, and when he did that, he took us out of Wasilla, and we never really went back.

I was a shy kid growing up, and I liked the idea of playing under this alter ego: like, I could be Ziggy Stardust, but I also knew I could never be Ziggy Stardust.

I’ve always been into thrifting. I’m a fan of finding unique pieces and having them tailored or altered.

Growing up, I just always doodled, which is the worst word for it. I would just draw things in class, get yelled at by my teachers, get my drawings taken away. That stuff happened all the time.

We went to Japan and stayed an extra day just to go shopping. New York is one of those places where we never get that. If we’re there, we’re working.

Whether it be tour posters, album packaging, videos, stage design, etc., the visual aspect of music is very important to us.

‘Feel It Still’ came around pretty much as organically as you can put a song together.

I want to share music that we grew up with for this generation, the music my parents shared with me.

I grew up in Alaska, okay? My dad graduated high school and went straight to the mountains. He had $300 and staked a claim. He didn’t even have enough to put a title on the land: just had the records that he bought before he moved.

When we were kids, my favorite thing was coming to upstate New York where my family is from and hanging out with my grandparents’ friends pre-Internet and them asking if we had stores or ‘Do you have TV in Alaska?’

It’s so perfectly Alaska to be like, ‘Dad we’re going to the Grammys,’ and for him to be like, ‘Oh, well that’s great, Johnny. All right, gotta go back to work.’

Growing up, the only acts that came to us in Alaska were the big ones. The Mariah Careys.

There’s no making art for art’s sake. You’ve got to make the best art you can.

The reason I got into music was obviously because of bands like The Beatles and Pink Floyd, things like that.

It’s funny, because I had no intention of being in a band because I was so shy. But I loved playing music and loved writing songs. I always thought I’d be in the background and, if I did get into a band, be a backup musician.

The Alaskan summers are one of the most amazing things you can see.

We tour, we do the distance from friends and family, not really knowing how to connect with people on the same level. I’ve understood now, as much as we tour, we live day-to-day, so our lives are much different than the people who stay at home and go home every night.

Great musicians need great producers. The Beatles had George Martin.

Basically, great directors know how to combine music with the scenes that they are working on.

My dad builds houses, and, for the earlier portion of my life anyway, we moved around quite a bit. It took us to some just really amazing places.

Poor Ron Paul. He means well. He really does. But there’s something about him. I don’t know what it is. From falling victim to Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno to that old-man shuffle, he just seems like kind of a… like kind of a sissy.

As a songwriter, it’s good to have criticism, and I like objective opinions.

That’s really important in a producer – a producer that can step up and play a keyboard, play a bass, play a guitar, and help you with things instead of just saying, ‘I think this could be better.’