Art & Creativity Quote by Daniel Johns

There’s a disarming kind of anti-mythology in Daniel Johns admitting they “never considered ourselves to be a good band.” In an industry that trains artists to narrate their rise as destiny, he reaches for something more believable: accident, appetite, and the blunt thrill of imitation. The line works because it punctures two sacred rock scripts at once - the genius origin story and the tortured-artistry pose. Instead, Johns frames early creation as fandom with instruments.

The intent is modesty, but the subtext is sharper: “good” is a category invented after the fact, usually by gatekeepers and markets. In the moment, what matters is whether the sound in your head can be dragged into the room. By naming Black Sabbath and Soundgarden, he’s not just listing influences; he’s positioning the band inside a lineage of heaviness that’s more about texture and mood than technical virtue. Sabbath’s monolithic riff and Soundgarden’s elastic menace become a shorthand for a particular kind of seriousness - not virtuosity, but weight.

Context matters because Johns came up in a scene (and an era) obsessed with authenticity: grunge’s refusal of glam polish, rock’s suspicion of ambition. Saying “we were playing for fun” doubles as a cultural password. Yet it also hints at how ambition often sneaks in through the side door. You start by chasing your heroes’ tones; you end up, if you’re lucky, discovering the part of your voice that imitation couldn’t cover.