Top 35 Robert Hilburn Quotes

I think there’s a lot of writers who took rock music more seriously: Greil Marcus, Jon Landau.

I think Pearl Jam, greatly inspired by The Who, really did become a sort of musical conscience of a generation. I love such passionate songs as ‘Not for You,’ ‘Wishlist,’ and ‘Long Road.’

When I began to interview people from the ’60s, my first question was always, ‘What was your favorite record?’

As soon as I started working at the ‘Los Angeles Times,’ people warned me not to get too close to artists because it could make it difficult to review their work, and you can never really tell if the ‘friendship’ is genuine.

Like David Bowie, Madonna visualizes music so that her best work seems equally designed with the stage or screen in mind – not just the jukebox.

Growing up in the icy isolation of Hibbing, Minn., Dylan, who was still Robert Allen Zimmerman then, found comfort in the country, blues, and early rock ‘n’ roll that he heard at night on a Louisiana radio station whose signal came in strong and clear.

Take any celebrity – all we really know is what they choose to tell us or what they show us in public.

The Cure is clearly above average but seemingly unable to rally itself to move to a higher plateau.

I was driving to school at Reseda High School – I was a junior, and it was early 1956. I had a ’49 Ford. I was listening to the country station, and ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ comes on… It didn’t sound like the stuff I was hearing on the pop stations.

Johnny Cash was a good man. He tried to live up to his faith. It was just difficult.

Courtney Love is so famous among journalists for her loquaciousness that the joke is that you don’t have to worry about questions when you interview her – just be sure you have lots of tape.

I really thought I knew Johnny Cash. I thought I didn’t need to spend a lot of time researching his life. But I wasn’t within 50 miles of knowing Johnny Cash. I knew he was a good guy and a dedicated artist, but I didn’t know the demons, the struggles he had in his personal life.

John Cougar Mellencamp – I didn’t like him in the beginning. I liked some of the stuff around the ‘Scarecrow’ period. I go back and forth on him all the time, but I think he’s a good artist. I don’t know if he’s a great artist or not, but he rose above his original level of achievement.

I didn’t know if I should tell people that Johnny Cash had an affair with his sister-in-law while his wife was pregnant. How much does the public need to know about a performer?

It’s important to realize that everybody who went into country music, and most everybody who went into rock and roll in the ’50s, they had no more goal than a hit on the jukebox. Johnny Cash, from the very beginning, had a goal that he wanted to make music that lifted people’s spirits.

Even though The Cure helped pioneer the jangly, dance-oriented guitar and keyboard style it continues to embrace, there are other bands that now employ the post-punk style with greater flair. This leaves The Cure’s live presentation seeming a bit anonymous.

You had to read what I wrote if you lived in L.A. in 1975 and cared about pop music.

David Bowie, who spent most of the ’70s establishing himself as a master of psychological disguises, is spending the ’80s trying to convince us that he’s just a regular fella – or at least as close to one as a millionaire pop star can be.

I was getting calls in 1970 from teenagers, little girls, and they’d say, ‘Oh, I like your stories about so-and-so so much. How old are you? 20?’ ‘No. Older than that.’ ’30?’ ‘No. Older than that.’ And they’d hang up.

I took a musician friend of mine to a Rolling Stone concert once, and all he did was cringe. I asked him what was wrong, and he said, ‘Keith Richards’ guitar is out of tune.’ But ‘Tumbling Dice’ still sounded great to me.

His belief in the power of music to convey ideas – not just entertain – has filtered down to musicians in every field, from alt-rock to hip-hop, from Bruce Springsteen and U2 to Arcade Fire and Kanye West. Popular music is different because of Johnny Cash.

Because record companies do not routinely release sales figures the way film studios do, the weekly charts in trade publications like ‘Billboard’ provide the best independent measure of record appeal.

With the Internet today, it is possible to do some mixed media things where you can write about an artist and link to a song or video by that artist. But that was unheard of in the years I was at the paper.

It’s a hard thing to be an artist and not give up.

To many, Courtney Love smells like rock hype. Reviewers may be excited about her, but the rock audience may be skeptical of the credentials of someone who is more famous for her interviews and her spouse than for her music.

It’s a different world because of the Internet and bloggers. Now, every editor is concerned about speed because every minute counts. Speed is more important than content. Whoever gets a review out first becomes the authority.

I’m guilty of being perceived as having narrow taste. I went after the artists that I thought were important – Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen and stuff.

I learned how difficult it is to be an artist. There are always compromises. The record company wants you to do this, your fans want you to do this, your family – you can’t concentrate on your work.

Without people like Dylan and the Beatles and people like Paul Simon, I think rock n’ roll would have died out like Dixieland jazz.

Some writers sit down every day for two or three hours, at least, to write, whether they are in the mood or not. Others wait for inspiration.

When I met Johnny Cash, I didn’t know what to ask: where were you born, who was your favorite recording artist, what’s your favorite color – I didn’t know.

At the ‘L.A. Times,’ I always wanted to write about artists I thought were meaningful. So I interviewed Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Eminem, White Stripes. And I could understand how almost everybody I interviewed had a sense of artistry.

‘Walk on the Wild Side’ was a very catchy song.

When the Eagles were starting out in the early ’70s, it would have been hard to imagine anyone in the fledgling, country-accented rock group someday seriously challenging the artistic punch of Neil Young or Joni Mitchell.

I first met Michael in the early days of the Jackson 5 at the family home in Los Angeles, and the memory that stands out is that Michael, as cute and wide-eyed as an 11-year-old could be, was eager to get through the interview so he could watch cartoons before having to go to bed.