"""""I actually learned how to play drums in my attic listening to 'Doctor Feelgood,' the Mötley Crüe record,"" Levine said. ""Just listening to it and playing it. I had a karaoke machine that I'd put, it was a really bad idea, but I put it right by my ear in order to get it loud enough, I'd have to crank it all the way."" "I just had these drums, a really crappy drum set,"" he continued. ""I would be listening to it and playing it, almost treating it like a monitor, and I'd have it rigged up so it was blasting in my face and I'd play that whole album and I learned how to play drums. So, thank you Tommy Lee, appreciate it."

"Montrose was one of the really important American statements made at a time when the only rock that was credible was English. They had Led Zeppelin and Humble Pie, just anything that was credible was all English and, out of nowhere, this Montrose record comes out that just kills! The American bands were sloppy and fat and looked like the Grateful Dead, and it was just pathetic. But Montrose came from the same area, the San Francisco Bay Area and it was like a breath of fresh air. That first record, even Montrose couldn't equal it, it was just better than the other American bands of the time. If you ever listen to 'Kickstart My Heart' by Mötley Crüe, that intro was note-for-note, everything was taken from 'Bad Motor Scooter', that sounds like a motorcycle going by. Clearly, Montrose was trying to do, with Sammy Hagar's vocals, a sort of American Led Zeppelin thing. But the songs were undeniable! Song after song, again: consistency. Unfortunately, after that Sammy Hagar left the band and everything changed. Ronnie Montrose never went back, never found his mojo again. Eventually he committed suicide. But when we're putting on makeup and getting ready for shows because we're in the middle of a tour, it never fails. Every other day we put on the Montrose record."

"When I was young I always dug listening to live concerts. It was like we were there. I always think that live albums are a good way to represent a body of work anyway because it shows the songs as part of a collection better than, say, a greatest hits record. It wasn't so much that Cheap Trick At Budokan was live, it was more the selection of songs. Rick [Nielsen] was really an amazing showman as a guitar player as far as the tricks that he did were concerned. Plus, the power that he had despite being essentially a three-piece rhythm outfit was amazing. Then you had Tom [Petersson] with his twelve-string bass… Whoever thought someone would play something like that? I could have done without some of the squealing but having gone to Japan so much; I get it. That's their way of showing you that they loved you. I never really considered Cheap Trick to be a glam rock band. People forget that Rick used to have long hair before he transitioned to having short hair and wearing baseball caps when they supported KISS in 1977. Take a song like 'Hello There'. It has such a killer, punk rock attitude. It reminds me of Mötley Crüe doing a song like 'Live Wire': you don't expect that kind of aggression and when you hear it you think, ""Alright, you dudes can let it rip when you want to.""