To me, rock and roll is like an ethos or a state of mind.
It is proper that noble spirits, equipped with truth and enlightened with the Divine intelligence, should arm themselves against dense ignorance by climbing up to the high rock and tower of contemplation.
We’re not the kind of people to just take a break and say everything’s going good, you know, let’s rest on our laurels, act like rock stars – we take it very seriously, and we certainly aren’t just celebrating and doing a victory lap.
Only two to three per cent of an audience is interested in words and pays attention to lyrics; most of the rest of it is about image or the beat or the sound, or else it’s a tribal thing – country & western, rap, heavy metal, with historical folk rock off in some kind of cult.
If Nirvana had remained a small, underground punk rock band, Kurt Cobain would still be alive. And he’d probably be living in Seattle, getting kind of fat and balding, be relatively happy and producing records for other people.
I do live like a rock star, but it’s not as great as it sounds. It’s a lot of traveling.
You can find old Jewish newspapers from Detroit that have my promotional ad in them. It was a totally insane time in my life. Paul Rudd was also a bar mitzvah emcee, you know? It was like being a local rock star in Detroit.
I think the hip hop world and the rock world still have a lot in common, but it certainly seems like things happen and break at a much faster pace in the hip hop world.
Anyone who’s 71 years old would look ridiculous singing rock.
I done wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale; handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail; only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalised a brick; I’m so mean I make medicine sick.
When Little Richard used to stand up and play it was just fabulous, and Liberace had the candlesticks and the rings and the gift of the gab. The piano’s is the most ungainly rock’ n’ roll instrument of all time but those two people transcended it, as did Jerry Lee Lewis.
All that stuff about heavy metal and hard rock, I don’t subscribe to any of that. It’s all just music. I mean, the heavy metal from the ’70s sounds nothing like the stuff from the ’80s, and that sounds nothing like the stuff from the ’90s. Who’s to say what is and isn’t a certain type of music?
There’s always gonna be rock n’ roll bands, there’s always gonna be kids that love rock n’ roll records, and there will always be rock n’ roll.
I was drawn to love songs, but I was just drawn to great music – no matter if it’s hip-hop, pop, R&B or whether it’s rock n’ roll or country. It could be a Garth Brooks song, and if it’s a smash, then I’ll love the different wordplay and different melodies. That’s what I’m a fan of – great music.
My mom was a rock ‘n’ roll mom.
If there is a Heaven, I’m sure Rock Hudson is there because he was such a kind person.
I think Freddie Mercury is probably the best of all time in terms of a rock voice. There was a vulnerability to it, his technical ability was amazing, and so much of his personality would come out through his voice. I’m not even a guy to buy Queen records, really, and I still think he’s one of the best.
I grew up listening to a lot of emo music, a lot of rock music, a lot of rap music, a lot of trap music, funk, everything.
Rock n’ roll is the Devil’s music.
I’ve always been spiritual but I’ve never had a proper context, and it took me awhile to find the proper context. It’s hard to realize you can have any kind of relationship with God you want… and so I now have a punk rock relationship with God.
My mind is stuffed with quotes. Lines, couplets, paragraphs, stanzas; Bessie Smith, Stevie Smith, Tin Pan Alley, rock and roll. They tease or lead or hurl me into a dream space of jostling languages that I need to bask in each day in order to write.
There’s no way I can compete with someone who can write rap or rock and roll. Nor do I wish to. But I’ve always kept up to date with music changes. I worked very hard not to type myself.
I said, ‘I’m a rock star. I can’t preach in nobody’s church. Are you crazy?’ Let alone buy one. Oh, I wound up buying one.
Punk is musical freedom. It’s saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster’s terms, ‘nirvana’ means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that’s pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.
Because you have things like ‘American Idol’ and you’ve got radio stations that play music made entirely by computers, it’s easy to forget there are bands with actual people playing actual instruments that rock.
We don’t swim for the attention. We don’t swim to be rock stars. There is something beautiful about being in an anonymous sport and being fairly anonymous. It enables you do something you love without any of the other effects.
Being married is such a blessing, and my wife has been a rock. I rely on her for emotional support.
The Midnight Express and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express were the greatest tag team rivalry of all time and drew more money than any other tag team rivalry probably in history, and I did manage the WWF champion and WWF Tag Team champion at different points in time but my phone hasn’t rung and I haven’t lost sleep over it.
I won’t be a rock star. I will be a legend.
Sometimes I worked with just a background of a rock or a tree or black velvet, and just had to imagine the whole thing.
I’ve got rock ‘n’ roll in my blood.
I wanted to have the adoration of John Lennon but have the anonymity of Ringo Starr. I didn’t want to be a frontman. I just wanted to be back there and still be a rock and roll star at the same time.
When I was 5, I started taking singing lessons, and then, after ‘School of Rock,’ I started taking guitar lessons. I would always write songs and play them for my friends, and I would play my guitar on the set a lot.
My first manager was Gordon Mills, who I’d met right at the beginning. We shared a flat in London and traveled with rock bands doing one-nighters. Later, he became a songwriter and manager whose stable was Tom Jones, Gilbert O’Sullivan, and myself.
Here we are, we’re alone in the universe, there’s no God, it just seems that it all began by something as simple as sunlight striking on a piece of rock. And here we are. We’ve only got ourselves. Somehow, we’ve just got to make a go of it. We’ve only ourselves.
My mother’s records were formative for me, but when I became a teenager, I wanted to find songs that she wasn’t hip to. She was so hip, though, that I had to go outside rock n’ roll – so for about 10 years, I only listened to hip-hop, house and techno.
Rock and roll mainly but I can play passable jazz also.
When I was young, I wanted to do something more low-key, like become a drummer in a rock band.
Chris Rock is a good friend of mine, and he is hysterical.
If you want to wear something and you feel confident, you are going to rock it. That’s what I love about fashion: it’s your choice and your chance to express yourself.
Dance music is no longer a simple Donna Summer beat. It’s become a whole language that I find fascinating and exciting. Eventually, it will lose the dance tag and join the fore of rock.
Teenagers did not have, before rock ‘n’ roll and rhythm-and-blues – they did not have any type of music they could call their own once they got over 4 or 5 years old until they were well into their 20’s and considered adults.
For a while we were chasing a book by Graham Greene to do Brighton Rock as a musical. We didn’t get the rights, so we decided to create something from scratch, with Jonathan. By that time we were big fans of his work.
My inspiration is European fashion. I’m really into Euro fashion, and I also love rock n’ roll. That’s the mentality that I like to have when I’m dealing with fashion.
In general I was a good kid. It usually took a lot to make me mad. But once I reached the boiling point, I lost all rational control. Totally without thinking, when my anger was aroused, I grabbed the nearest brick, rock, or stick to bash someone. It was as if I had no conscious will in the matter.
We were the first generation of rock & roll, but life goes on.
The Rock will always come back to us.
Music was in the air when I was growing up. My siblings Katy, Dave and Phil were musical; my dad worked in inner-city New York where a musical revolution was taking place – folk music, rock n’ roll, gospel music. My sister taught me to sing. My brothers taught me to play.
At times, my confidence is rock bottom, although I try for it to be sky high, thanks to the people that are always there with me and support me.
It’s absurd for anybody to look around and hear the acts and artists who cite us as an inspiration, and then tell me that we’re not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
It’s better for me to play with guys because Rock ‘n’ Roll has such an aggressive attitude.
I am like a drop of water on a rock. After drip, drip, dripping in the same place, I begin to leave a mark, and I leave my mark in many people’s hearts.
Crime fiction is the new rock n’ roll.
Most managers in the rock n’ roll world… don’t care so much about who’s in the band as long as it’s making money.
My thing is you’re only as good as the people you work with. I’ve been blessed to work with the Wayanses and Eddie Murphy and Adam Sandler and Chris Rock, and it makes you better.
I come from a very musical family. My dad taught me to play guitar. I play violin and drums as well. Violin, I started in elementary school. Drums actually came when I was in a program called ‘Rock Star,’ which was really awesome. We were doing a song by the Ramones, so I thought, ‘Why not play the drums?’
