There are enough scary rock & roll mothers in the world.
The difference between blues, jazz, rock n’ roll and rap is that rap stayed poor. Even the white rappers are poor. It’s scarier to look at poor people; it makes everyone uncomfortable. Their pain is something that people would like to see swept under the rug.
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.
I had a jazz trio, a rock n’ roll band, and I played drums in junior high, high school, college, big bands, and I played timpani in the symphony. I am a drummer. It’s the one instrument I actually play pretty well. It’s just hard to carry on your back.
My mom passed away a day before high school started, and her dream was for me to be a full rock and roll guy, and play drums in a band.
I like to think that I’m a populist entertainer, but I’m a little bit idiosyncratic, and sometimes the networks wouldn’t really roll with that.
I’ve never really had specific goals and stuff like that – I think I sort of learned early on that if you kind of let life roll in at your feet, you will get a lot of great stuff if you are just aware and open to it.
I’m in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the One-Hit Wonder Wall. I’m still very troubled by the fact that I’m in the hall and my dad isn’t.
Because the blues is the basis of most American music in the 20th century. It’s a 12-bar form that’s played by jazz, bluegrass and country musicians. It has a rhythmic vocabulary that’s been used by rock n’ roll. It’s related to spirituals, and even the American fiddle tradition.
Rock n’ roll is the Devil’s music.
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.
I love old school rock and roll.
When I started out, everyone seemed to be adopting these names… Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious. I wasn’t really Rotten or Vicious or Nasty, so I wanted something a bit more funny – yet something that seemed real rock ‘n’ roll… something that acknowledged my ambition.
You learn to not take things personally and to just let it roll off of you.
As a kid at the World’s Fair in 1965, I missed seeing the big global population clock roll over from 2,999,999,999 to 3 billion – I was really disappointed.
You don’t need validation from other people. You’ve gotta find it within yourself and sit in it and roll with it.
One of the mistakes I made was believing that the rock n’ roll genre as a genre was much more free than the whole pop or R&B scene.
The part an actor played on stage was once written on a separate roll of paper.
I’ve always played every amp I’ve ever had full up, because rock and roll is supposed to be played loud. Also, that’s how you get your sustain.
The release of ‘Chinese Democracy’ marks a historic moment in rock n’ roll.
I’ll do a cappella stuff, rock ‘n’ roll and swing stuff.
In every decade rock and roll starts to get very serious and navel gazing and kind of self serious and every once and a while it kind of needs a kick in the pants.
My mom loved rock ‘n roll. My father hated it. We couldn’t play it when he was around.
I don’t believe people playing rock n’ roll should have crowns. We’re not kings and queens. Anybody can play it.
The government is already into our lives a whole lot more than they should be. If I were president, I’d roll everything back. Everything!
I don’t want to see old people doing rap or rock and roll. It makes me cringe.
I lost my innocence with Johnny Cash. I used to watch the ‘Johnny Cash Show’ on television in Wangaratta when I was about 9 or 10 years old. At that stage I had really no idea about rock n’ roll. I watched him, and from that point I saw that music could be an evil thing – a beautiful, evil thing.
To get the feel of how the slider should roll off of your index finger, use this grip and practice at half speed and roughly half the distance to the mound.
Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly, even if they roll a few stones upon it.
If there is any way you can get colder than you do when you sleep in a bedding roll on the ground in a tent in southern Tunisia two hours before dawn, I don’t know about it.
I learned to play piano in a rock n’ roll context or band context from country records – you know, Floyd Cramer – and from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Stax. And none of those are keyboard records.
When the fearsome foursome of rock music, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis, decided to show up in Toronto for a rock and roll festival, I knew we had to go there to try to get them all on film.
I almost feel like I’m unoffendable now. I can roll with whatever.
Rock & roll is not obscure, it’s really easy to understand. So is my painting.
There are a whole bunch of roles where people say, ‘Oh, you’re playing yourself.’ I guess it’s kind of a compliment. Or people say, ‘Oh, man, you just roll out of bed and do that.’ The work is to make it look effortless. That’s the hard part.
We must insist on assimilation – immigration without assimilation is an invasion. We need to tell folks who want to come here, they need to come here legally. They need to learn English, adopt our values, roll up their sleeves and get to work.
I have this guitar on which I occasionally kill time making up rock n’ roll lyrics.
I started out in this business in rock and roll bands and stumbled into drag. Drag just happened to be my vehicle for my creativity. So, you know, it’s afforded me the opportunity to create new shows, to make music.
You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
I have rock ‘n’ roll pumping through my veins.
Every day of the year where the water is 76, day and night, and the waves roll high, I take my sled, without runners, and coast down the face of the big waves that roll in at Waikiki.
The male is always the pawn in a romantic comedy. Come together, break up, go chase her, get her, roll credits. That’s what happens in all of them.
The reason kids like rock ‘n roll is their parents don’t.
Rock and roll has probably given more than it’s taken.
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.
I was kind of broke . ‘The Girl on the Train’ was a last roll of the dice for me as a fiction writer.
Hip hop has the urgency and rebelliousness that early rock n’ roll and punk had: a level of rule-breaking and flirtation with danger. It allows you to break the rules.
Rock n’ roll is not just a fashion statement; it is the attitude, and it has a political posturing as well.
I turned down a scholarship to Yale. The problem with college is that there’s a tendency to mistake preparation for productivity. You can prepare all you want, but if you never roll the dice you’ll never be successful.
Rock n’ roll really belongs to all America. It really doesn’t belong to one city.
The biggest problem in rock journalism is that often the writer’s main motivation is to become friends with the band. They’re not really journalists; they’re people who want to be involved in rock and roll.
My favorite type of music to sing to would be rock and roll, Tenacious D, Led Zeppelin, some Queen – I love all of them. I love singing to them because they’re all just great voices. I love listening to very obscure jazz.
Rock ‘n’ roll was two pegs below being a prisoner of war back then.
All they had to do was put my name on a marquee and watch the money roll in.
Fashion will take on added stature one day, but try not to be stifled by it. You will learn, as you mature, to swap heels for Stan Smith trainers, minidresses for crisp white shirts. And you will never be one of those people who just roll out of bed.
Now, I don’t know how they judge all that, but if anybody in the world deserves to be in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, Ritchie Valens does.
I grew up mostly with classical, big band, and a lot of Irish music – I really didn’t start listening to rock and roll until I was maybe sixteen.
Im more in love with Rock n Roll today than other things. It grows, you know?
Rock n’ roll unchained a nation and revolutionized radio and the record industry, not to mention the motion picture business.
We have the opportunity and the responsibility to lead our country to a better and brighter future, and I cannot wait to roll up my sleeves and get back to work.
God gives us the ability, but rock ‘n’ roll was created by men.
Ian Gillan, Roger Glover and I wanted to be a hard rock band – we wanted to play rock and roll only.
I think Lady Gaga is great and is changing pop music and bringing back a certain rock ‘n’ roll spirit, swagger to the game.
