Quotes
from various interviews
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Stef (talking about drunken Chi):
"Homeboy is tripping. But don't give him no whiskey. When he's sober, nice guy Chi is hanging. When he's drunk, forget it. He is like the absolute opposite. Once his eyes start getting googly, then you know it's on. He'll stare at you for 10 minutes like you did something wrong."

Chino (on Street Carp):
"It's about meeting someone on the street that you haven'y seen in a long time and you really don't want to talk to them, but it's somebody that you are still infatuated with."

Stef (on spirituality"):
"Our band's only moved by spirits of the liquid form."

Chino (on My Own Summer):
"That song was written while I was in Seattle recording the record. It was one of the last songs we wrote. I was completely burnt out. In the morning I was getting pissed off at everyone because I'd be up in the studio all night. I'd try and go in my bed, I'd go to sleep and the sun would keep waking me up and I would go outside and it would just hurt. So I went in the studio and it just kind of came out. I wrote a song kind of about Armageddon and basically the song says in my own summer there'd be no sun, nobody in the streets, nothing around. That's basically what the song is about. It's kind of an anti-sun song. It says cloud please come shove the sun aside, that's where shove it comes from."

Stef (on fans):
"I like it that people got to dig into our music to find out about something, because you know those kind of people are going to be the true fans. They are gonna be there because they love the music. When they come to the show, they're going to be the ones singing all the lyrics back, you know. You can tell they are feeling it like you're feeling it cause they got into it. They didn't just pop it on and they're going through the motions with you, you know. They know the song and they probably know the parts that you did on the song that you don't even do live because we're doing what we feel up there and they probably go, 'Woah, where did that come from?' They just play it over and over and over and they know every little sound and little audio nugget that we don't even remember putting on there."

Abe (on touring with KISS):
"Man, we couldn't even approach them. There were so many rules on that tour. It was fun, but, the stupidest rule? If they came walking down the hall, you couldn't make eye contact with them. If they came over to you, then you could talk to them, but they had to approach first. I mean, c'mon man, this is ridiculous."

Chino:
"I love rhythm. thats what i started out doing. when we started the band, I had a drum set and i brought it over to Stefens house and we started jamming. But I knew that Abe was one of the baddest drummers I'd ever seen, so i was kinda worried when we brought him over to Stefen's place."

Chino (on "Survivor"):
"Oh hell no. You gotta understand we watch skate videos and stuff, man. Those videos are straight insane compared to watching 'Survivor' and stuff like that."

Chino:
"Today I went to the record store and I bought DMX, which, I don't know, I just fuckin love it. That's one of the angriest mother-fuckers in hip-hop. Anybody with that much emotion, I just dig it, no matter what kind of music it is. Whether it be mad or sad or whatever. I dig somebody who can just let loose and just put-out like that."

Chino:
"I always masturbate when Im at home. Im like, (mimicking masterbation) You want some of this baby? and all spurt it all over her tits or something. Somehow it seems like a waste of paste."

Chino:
"Some nights I'll just be laying in my bunk writing, just to state some things, whatever I'm feeing. I throw in my abstract ideas and then I'll put something very blunt in there, in the middle of everything. It sticks out more. I'm basically explaining something to you. A lot of people don't pay attention to lyrics, but the people that do,it's cool because they trip out on it. I like that a lot, it makes me feel good."

Chi:
"I'm fashionably uncircumcised. My sweater has a hood."

Stef:
"Dude, when my band is huge, I'm gonna have the show start with my guitar intro, but I won't be onstage and the crowd will be wondering where I am. Then, I'll come in from the back of the arena hanging from a cable above the crowd playing my guitar through a Nady wireless!"

Chino (at Waldrock):
"Sometimes i hear certain sounds...and they make my dick really fucking hard"

Chino:
"Morrissey is so damn suave, I don't understand why people cannot see that. People think I'm joking about that, but I straight up love that man. I went to school in the 5th grade dressed like Boy George. It was a predominately black and Mexican area where I went to school, and people were looking at me like 'What the hell is he doing?'. I love his persona and his boldness, and I love that about Morrissey."

Chi:
"We're allowed certain idiosyncrasies as musicians, so I become a little more eccentric by default. If I feel like wearing pajamas and bedroom slippers for a week straight, I'll just do it.

Frank (on the Deftones):
"We're all like brothers" - Stef: "Well, (looking at Chi) some sisters"

Chi (on Deftones song writing process):
"Normally we need a bunch of beer, we need to throw shit at each other and then have somebody leave practice pissed."

Deftones:
"We've been around 10 years now. The first show we ever played was a backyard barbarque. We were like 16. We were so excited, it was our first show. We had 6 or 7 songs but we didnšt have a name. So we decided it was Def, and we needed a name so we called ourselves The Deftones. It was like the 80's, everything was Def then. Tones was almost like a classic '50ish band name, like with all those bands that ended with 'Tones. It's been our name ever since, but then, a name is a name. It's the music that speaks. Metallica is a silly name too."

Chino (on his first time recording with producer Terry Date):
"I was a little scared. He (Terry) was really cool. Sometimes I'd be in the studio and get frustrated. I think it was on "Bored," that part where it comes in with 'Get bored.' That part, I could not do. I couldn't come in at the right time. I was just so out of it. I was trying to fix that part because it just didn't sound right. I was trippin' and just about crying. I was like, 'I cant' do this Terry, I can't do it!' He was like, 'It's cool, you can do it. If you want, go home and chill and we'll do it tomorrow.' He didn't let me get too frustrated after that. I wanted to quit a couple of times, just because I was so frickin' nervous. I felt like I was failing sometimes."

Abe (on his favorite beer):
"Coors Lite man that's cause I'm older now and trying to keep my figure"

Chino (to the dirt throwers at Waldrock):
"God made dirt so dirt won't hurt! You cant fuck with me...see ive been through Chile, Santiago...muthafuckas will spit on you...but see I'm a fucking man...I'm not a boy...I dont sit on stage complaining about my childhood...cause who fucking cares?...are you a fucking man...are you a fuckin man, yeah dirt thrower, are you a fucking man?!"

Stef (on practicing at Dominic's (their old bassist) house and dealing with Dominic's family):
"One time they (Dominic's family) held all our equipment hostage. We told them we'd give 'em $10 for being so cool and letting us practice there, and they just busted out and said 'You guys can't get your equipment 'till we get that ten bucks.' I'd go over there and my amps would be hooked up to the stereo."

Chino:
"Before we left for the Ozzfest, we were making more heavy stuff. And when we came back, everything started getting more feminine...I think maybe I got Satan-ed out on the tour or something like that."

Stef :
"Thats the only way i can hang out with Cypress Hill - smoke a lot of pot. They said "You wanna kick it with us? You gotta smoke the weed! (Laughs)"

Chino (on his Stef's "size"):
"If anyone really wants to know, check out the public access TV show 'Colin's Sleazy Friends' when we were on it, because Stephen pulled out his dick and started working that thing like bubblegum. I don't know what he was thinking. Tapioca pudding coming out of there and shit."

Chi:
"I look mad when I'm drunk, even if I'm not. My eyes get all googly and shit and I have this crazy scowl on my face. I look like a mean drunk.

Chino (on Digital Bath):
"I wrote this in the bathroom of the house where we stayed in teh Hollywood Hills while I was doing my vocals. We had this bathroom of the house that merged Abe's room and my room together, and we spent a lot of time just hanging out in the bathroom, staying up and partying all night. I came up with this scenario of luring a female friend down into the bath and electrocuting her. It's a beautiful song, but it does have a sinister side."

Stef (on guitar tunings):
"When we did the first record we did standard tuning for our whole lives, and I was like, I'm just tired of this damn standard tuning, and I changed it, I just dropped it down and D-tuned it. I was like, look you guys can play in standard if you want, I'm playing in this dropped tuning. We dont have discussions on what we wanna do, we force eachother to do what they dont want."

Chino (on tattoos):
"I've got three, this is the first one I got [a sun on his wrist], I don't like it, but our bass player has it, and I got it. Actually, the sun is probably my biggest enemy, so Išll probably get it laser removed or cut off my arm. This one [a virgin Mary on his forearm] is the only one I like, I'm really into Catholic art. And I have a tattoo on my back with my name on it. I don't really like that either."

Chi:
"I'm by far the smelliest motherfucker in any band. I've heard that the bassist from Corrosion Of Conformity is pretty smelly, but he can't be as bad as me. I fucking stink."

Chino (about trends): "I got my eyebrow pierced before anybody had it, and then it started becoming cliché and I took it out. It's kinda like nowadays it's really normal and it kinda looks silly."

Chi:
"We love the Bad Brains, we toured with them, even Bad Brains told us, "We give you the torch, pick up where we left off on 'Quickness', and that was a huge honor for us."

Chino (on RX Queen):
"The most futuristic sounding song. Abe and I created the drum loop - its a crazy, bionic rhythm. I wrote a seedy guitar line over it, and worked with Scott Weiland (Stone Temple Pilots) on the vocals for the bridge. He came up with a really cool harmony for me to sing."

Chi:
"One time I took my bass, flung it, and it noticed it was outta tune, and I look over and i had knocked Chino out, I Laid him out. I've taken out every band member except Frank, and ill get Frank next, ill jump into the turntables."

Chino (to the Waldrock crowd):
"Wake the FUCK UP! It's Saturday and tomorrow is God's day for those who believe, all my catholic brothers and sisters"

Chino:
"MTV can fucking bite my dick."

Chi (explaining his Adrenaline liner notes "The Almighty Spirit That Moves Through All Things"):
"Hmmm. I don't know. A guy named Tom Brown Jr. studied under an Apache elder. instead of categorizing under one God-head, he saw that everyone was going to have their own interpretation of God and a sense of harmony. So, "The Almighty Spirit That Moves Through All Things" refers to the harmonious nature of whatever you chose to call God, as it moves through everything, even down through sub-atomics. The way Tom Brown summed it up was the best. He didn't have any prejudices when talking about The Spirit That Moves Through All Things. He wasn't' being judgmental. He was describing the harmonious, underlying thing, which kind of rolls everything together. Actually, I don't know what it means...I just want people to think I'm cool"

Stef (in 1993):
"If we ever get signed, I want to set up the whole band in the back yard around 1:00 a.m. and just blam"

Chino (on practicing at Dominic's, their old bassist, house):
"Man, there'd be these chihuahuas runnin' around all ever the place, and we'd always have to give someone's car a jumpstart, or drive videos back to the store."

Frank (on the worst Deftones song ever):
"It's that one that Stephen wrote the lyrics for, what was it called? 'Booty Naked'? It's one from the early days and it's the only Deftones demo that is not freely available. Everything else is out there on the internet already. I think it's our homies trying to make money."

Chino :
"There's another band which has come out. They're called Far. They're from my hometown too. They have a real hard edge. The singer has a really, really beautiful voice. He has a beautiful voice but he also screams, he mixes it up really well. They just got signed for a record that came out on Immortal. You should check that out."

Chi (explaining his most embarrassing moment drunk):
"Just about everything really, although there was that time when I punched out the windshield of a car I was driving. I also tried to throw one of our techs out of the tour bus window when he attempted to put Def Leppard on the stereo. Another time I was messed up on mushrooms and I threw this monster sports bag across the room and it knocked this girl right off her chair. Boom! That thing was huge."

Chino :
"Honestly, I didn't want Back To School on the record. It was unfinished at the time, and I didn't want anything too hip-hop-oriented on the album."

Stef (talking about Abe):
"One day im gonna take that fool out and his drums, he's gonna be like a set of bowling pins and I'm gonna be the ball (laughing) I'm just gonna go charging straight at him, injury or not."

Chino (on Abe leaving Deftones for Phallucy):
"Abe and I used to sit in class listening to Phallucy on my walkman and idolizing 'em," said Chino (in 1993). "I'm not surprised he left."

Stef (explaining the name "Deftones"):
"I wanted to pick a cool name, something that would just stand out but you know, not be all cheese-ball at the same time. Well, I was really into old classic music, like from the 50's and shit like thatŠ I was like, "Tones," you know there's a lot of bands from that era that has "The Tones" in it. And "Def," just cuz I listen to a lot of LL COOL J, Public Enemy, you know, like Def Jam and all that. Then I thought, "Deftones," that would be kinda cool. Def would be mean "cool" and Tones would be likeŠ the sound of the old days but being vague. cuz we didn't do just one kind of music."

Stef:
Bored? We wrote that song in half an hour - it came out of nowhere. 7 Words happened the same way, were just f**king around and boom, we had a song.

Stef (in 1996):
"I never had a car, ever. I ride a bike when I get home. I ride the bus, get a ride from friends, or ride my bike or skate. I never owned my own car, never even thought about having my own car. I still don't to this day. I have no need for one. Maybe one day I'll get one."

Stef:
"Chino has a softer image, Chino will eventually be a girl, he will go from being a man to a woman, by the next album he will be female. He'll have breasts, a sex change, his name will no longer be Camillo itll be Camile, Camilla."

Chino:
"It's little things like giving someone my phone number thinking he's a cool kid, and he ends up giving my number to tons of people and I'll have these pyscho girls calling me up, telling me they're gonna f**k my wife over and all kinds over crazy sh*t. It's f**ked up."

Stef (on his first band in '86, a punk band):
"Four Mexicans. We were all skaters. We were so bad, we didn't know we had to tune to each other, we just played. I'd been playing two weeks and we just started jammin'. I was like, yeah I'm in a real band"

Chino:
"I never seem to say what I want to say. Maybe thats because I have nothing to say."

Thanks to Ricardo Cruz for some of the quotes

Tidbits

  • When the young Deftones were searching for a second guitarist, their "Musician Wanted" flyer listed "Faith No More, Death Angel, Primus" among their influences.

  • Chino did a Trojan condom radio commercial with My Own Summer (Shove It) playing in the background.

  • Bored was orginally called "Oralled" and was written in 3 days

  • On the house of Fur tour, the intro music was the Depeche Mode song "Pimpf"

  • During the White Pony tours, they often started the show by playing Laura Palmers Theme, also heard as the intro to TV show "Twin Peaks."

  • "Change (In the House of Flies)" was orginally called "Flint"