In a new SMH interview, Greta Van Fleet bassist/keyboardist Sam Kiszka said the band could care less of people dislike their music.
“When we’re in the studio, we’re not thinking about what the people will like,” says Kiszka. “We make music for ourselves, honestly. We sculpt the album to be the way we want it to be rather than thinking, ‘Well, this might be catchy’ or ‘This may be more effective to grab listeners.’ When we released the album, we thought, ‘Well, here goes nothing.'”
“Thank God for the current rock and roll climate. It’s very inspiring,” Kiszka later said.
Kiszka and bandmate Danny Wagner were in high school when they signed their record deal, which Kiszka said was ‘strange.’
“That was a strange thing,” says Kiszka, adding that they waited until he was 18 to finalise the deal so that he could sign as a legal adult. “But when you’re in the middle of doing it, it doesn’t really register.”
Kiszka says he was first inspired to take music seriously by Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks album.
“I found my dad’s vinyl of it in the basement and Tangled Up in Blue blew my mind,” Kiszka says. “The lyricism was incredible. I really wanted to understand that song and I have no idea why. I was only 11 or 12 but I really took the time to understand that song. From then on, I was always in the basement, usually with Jake, and we would sit and listen to Bob Dylan while we would paint and draw. There is just something about Bob Dylan. He is the most phenomenal and that really inspired us to think about music.”
