‘The Queen Is Dead’ is not merely the Smiths’ best album, but it is one of those timeless, perfect, inexhaustible artifacts that could only have been made by a gang of sullen, sun-deprived rock & roll boys fighting off adulthood tooth and nail.
Hard rock for me is AC/DC, Def Leppard, Tesla, Kiss. Metal tends to be louder, ruder, darker, like Judas Priest, Slayer, Iron Maiden.
Parents walk a fine line between discipline and grace – values have to hold even when circumstances change or call for compromise or compassion. It’s the ultimate challenge to be both firm and fluid, soft and strong, yielding yet rock solid.
I can watch anything from 1970s West Coast rock to 1990s electro-funk – I don’t care.
‘Sunshine Superman’ was a pioneering work that for the first time presented a fusion of Celtic, jazz, folk, rock, and Indian music as well as poetry.
When Van Halen started out, there was no path to fame. We just played what we liked. Even today it always comes down to the simplicity of rock and roll.
I guess the line between being paranoid and being a rock star is smaller than one would expect.
It’s true that we come from the electronic scene in the ’90s, but maybe just two years before that we were not listening to electronic music. We like music in general, and maybe we’re more close to the rock energy or the rock aesthetic.
I like there to be some testosterone in rock, and it’s like I’m the one in the dress who has to provide it.
If we can figure out how to give more Americans a shot in tech, a shot at the ordinary jobs that don’t necessarily afford rock star status or come with generous stock options but that can sustain middle-class life, then we might just take a step toward stitching our nation back together.
I think God is the most unexplored territory in rock and roll music.
New York is the dream world, the center of jazz and rock.
What is remarkable about Joy Division is the way they are bereft of two of the mainstays of most other rock and pop: longing and supplication.
Of course having a baby derails the writing process for some time. And I will be the first to say that I have essentially no social life, because there’s just nothing left after being a mom, professor, and writer. I used to be big into rock climbing. No more. A lot falls by the wayside.
It’s good to have a lot of once-in-a-lifetimes in your lifetime. If you get the chance to skydive, go skydiving. If you’re offered a part in a weird Shakespeare play in San Diego, slap on some tights and rock out some iambic pentameter.
The older I get, the more of an anarchist I become, and I don’t mean in a punk rock way.
Rock ‘n’ roll was never supposed to be polite.
To me, the 90’s signaled the end of glam rock, the beginning of gangsta rap, and hopefully the beginning and end of boy bands.
I never, ever saw myself as glam because I didn’t wear makeup… my image is a plain leather jumpsuit, which is not glam at all. I’ve always seen myself as rock n’ roll and not glam.
Rock and Roll has no beginning and no end for it is the very pulse of life itself.
If I did one thing, I made cooking rock n’ roll: I made it sexy. I made young kids from rich backgrounds want to come into my world.
My whole life, I’ve loved ’80s synth and goth rock like The Sisters of Mercy and Depeche Mode.
No change in musical style will survive unless it is accompanied by a change in clothing style. Rock is to dress up to.
In that, Blade 2 is very much like a rock concert… if it’s too loud, you’re too old.
I don’t know if I miss it per se, but I do miss the fact that there just doesn’t seem to be any rock ‘n’ roll out there anyplace. Everything does seem kind of tame. It’s even hard in Manhattan to go out and find a good band to go see.
After we covered Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now,’ Brian May and Roger Taylor sent us a bottle of champagne and asked us if we’d sing it on stage during the ‘We Will Rock You’ musical on what would have been Freddie Mercury’s 60th birthday.
First, I’d become an avid reader of blogs, especially music blogs, and they seemed to be where the critical-thinking action was at, to have the kind of energy that I associate with rock writing of the 1970s or Internet e-mail discussion lists a decade ago.
We’re a rock n’ roll band. We play heavy metal music. And we want to give you a great time. That’s basically how it all boils down.
We all had to dodge the idea we were spokespeople for our races. Like, ‘Hey, it’s the Mexican Guy! The Filipino! The Chick!’ We’ve always stood up to it and said, ‘Fine, bring it on and we’ll show you how we rock.’
It is the universe where all rock players live- we all use distortion, overdrive, gain and saturation. I call it ‘fuzz.’
Many rock musicians are excellent cooks, I’ve found, and those that are prefer to eat their own cooking in the studio. I encourage this behavior as I also enjoy the benefits of fresh food.
You see, rock and roll isn’t a career or hobby – it’s a life force. It’s something very essential.
Washington’s character was rock solid. He came to stand for the new nation and its republican virtues, which was why he became our first President by unanimous choice.
I have always been a big rock fan and remember dressing up as Guns N’ Roses’ Axl Rose for my high school Halloween disco when I was 17. My teacher painted tattoos on, and I wore a small leather waistcoat and not much else.
One day I would love to do rock a gig on the moon – how rad would that be? Isn’t Richard Branson flying planes to outer space? Motley Crue could be the first band to play on the moon.
You know, Neil Young is singing Rock n’ roll will never die, and Neil never rocked and rolled in his life. I mean, he rocked, but he didn’t roll. He has got no swing in him.
Rock and roll is not an instrument. Rock and roll isn’t even a style of music. Rock and roll is a spirit that’s been going since the blues, jazz, bebop, soul, R&B, heavy metal, punk rock and, yes, hip-hop.
Growing up, I’ve always wanted to be a rock star.
Rock ‘n’ Roll, no roses or gardening.
I remember Mitch Miller saying every week, This rock and roll stuff will never last. But one doesn’t like to bring that up to Mitch.
‘Remember the Time’ and ‘You Rock My World’ from Michael Jackson were two of my favorite songs ever. My mom used to bump them all the time.
You play a ‘lowdown dirty shame slow and lonesome, my mama dead, my papa across the sea I ain’t dead but I’m just supposed to be’ blues. You can take that same blues, make it uptempo, a shuffle blues, that’s what rock n’ roll did with it. So blues ain’t going nowhere. Ain’t goin’ nowhere.
We did that with people like Chris Rock, Woody Harrelson, and the environmentalist Julia Butterfly Hill.
Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.
Rock stars are incredibly energizing to me.
When the band begins to get a name for themselves, and the writers get assigned to bands, they’ll hit somebody who just doesn’t like that kind of music, or they love hip hop but hate guitar rock.
Mama is my chance to be a stand-up comedian. In my mind, it’s my chance to be Chris Rock.
I think you sometimes have to go hit rock bottom before you can grow and rebuild as a person.
I grew up in a family that was very musical, learned the blues and everything like that. And I became a little bit frustrated with the simplicity of rock n’ roll and blues. I started listening to a lot of classical music – mainly Bach, Vivaldi.
So when I got to be about 13 or 14, I started listening – even though my parents music was way cool – to contemporary hard rock at that time, which was Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Ted Nugent and all that, and that’s just where I came from.
How can you have a rock n’ roll circus without a midget?
People who like progressive music tend to sneer at the idea of a kind of punk aesthetic, and people who like alternative indie rock or punk rock tend to sneer at what they see as the pretentiousness and pomposity of progressive music.
I play Rock Band, which is Guitar Hero times ten. You can play with four people, so when you have parties, you have a real band. Nobody ever wants to sing, so I’m always the one throwing down on the mic.
Rock ‘n Roll: The most brutal, ugly, desperate, vicious form of expression it has been my misfortune to hear.
People ask all the time, ‘What would you be doing if you weren’t Kid Rock?’ It’s simple: I’d be broke Kid Rock.
A well-rounded performer will listen to all kinds of music. I like classical, Middle Eastern, and rock a lot.
Nevada contains an extraordinary diversity of outdoor landscapes and recreation experiences. Red Rock Canyon, Black Rock Desert, Lake Tahoe and the Great Basin are each a part of our history, our character and our way of life.
I was roundly criticized for being in and around rock & roll music at its inception. It was the devil’s music: it would make your teeth fall out and your hair turn blue, whatever the hell. You get through that.
Antoine ‘Fats’ Domino was a 1950s rock n’ roll pioneer, a larger-than-life New Orleans figure, and a role model for the African-American community in a time of deep segregation.
