Punk Bands Quotes & Sayings

I got out of that immediately was that now, all of a sudden, rock music had become a spectator sport, that corporate labels and their bands were the new establishment, and punk was there to fight them the way the activist hippies must have fought what the establishment must have been ten years before. And it was interesting to see the reactions in different parts of the country. — Jello Biafra

If girls are ever going to start to be in bands as the norm rather than as the exception. They need to see people up there that have just started playing. That's something that had gotten lost. I think that's why there are so many great girl punk rock bands now. It's like you have to make up your own rules because the old rules don't apply. You just have to start with what you have. — Tobi Vail

I think some of the musicians are more like punk rock musicians. It's like an art as opposed to being a musician. It's definitely more radical psychedelic bands, more than anything. — Wayne Coyne

I guess, for me, what started me getting real excited about music was the New York punk and new-wave scene. All those bands looked back to the Velvet Underground and the Stooges and the Modern Lovers as well. But that was back when Television were punk, and the Talking Heads were punk. — Dean Wareham

My vision of punk rock was these dudes who were spitting on the audience and moshing. That's why I kind of left that scene. Then I see all these people around my same age or between 17 and 25 that were making music themselves in their own town. They weren't just singing, but creating. I see them putting out this music where there are tons of women involved in the scene and involved in the bands. — Kathleen Hanna

Me personally, I side more with punk rock bands. I grew up with The Misfits, The Dead Boys, The Damned, Dropkick Murphys, and early AFI. That was the stuff that really got me into music. Song writing wise, bands like Alkaline Trio were very important to me for beginning to write songs. — Andy Biersack

I'm a huge Nirvana fan and I like seeing things that at first seem out of context, but actually they're one of the biggest bands in the world. I like to see pop culture, like punk or alternative culture, clash with some other type of culture. — Nick Zinner

I was in a couple punk bands as a kid. I did some more experimental stuff with my friend Dan for a few years. — Venetian Snares

I've never recognized 'emo' as a genre of music. I always thought it was the most retarded term ever. I know there is this generic commonplace that every band that gets labeled with that term hates it. They feel scandalized by it. But honestly, I just thought that all the bands I played in were punk rock bands. The reason I think it's so stupid is that - what, like the Bad Brains weren't emotional? What - they were robots or something? It just doesn't make any sense to me. — Guy Picciotto

The underground scene is still a cool way to meet a lot of cool people, see a lot of interesting bands and get a lot of food for thought, but people have to remain curious and get their brain activity food from other places besides punk. — Jello Biafra

I made the big turnaround in the early Nineties when I started hearing all the tenth generation punk bands like Green Day and Offspring and all those people. It just made me fall in love with punk again and remember my roots, and since that time I've always wanted to do more of that kind of music again. — Jane Wiedlin

We don't want to act like adults. Anybody who can stay in a state of adolescence will be much better off later on. Look at people who are working nine-to-five jobs out of college, and look at professional skateboarders or guys in punk bands. See who's having more fun. — Tom DeLonge

When I was nine years old, I started playing guitar, and I took classical guitar lessons and studied music theory. And played jazz for a while. And then when I was around fourteen years old, I discovered punk rock. And so I then tried to unlearn everything I had learned in classical music and jazz so I could play in punk rock bands. — Moby

I can say is our point of reference - and I think that does make us different from some bands and similar to other bands too. But it's just that spirit - it's sort of like a punk spirit - but it's not punk meaning or as in like "I'm here and I'm going to get thrashy and bloody on-stage" - but, we're not going to listen to the rules and the roles already set in place. We just want to make music that is heartfelt and feels good and sounds good to our ears, and hopefully to many other's ears as well. — Theresa Wayman

There are a lot of bands who claim to be punk and they only play the music, they have no clue what it's all about. It's a lifestyle. It's not about popularity and all that crap. — Billie Joe Armstrong

I was still doing the punk thing, but also playing in some indie bands, I had a less crazy hairstyle. — Tony Palermo

Once I got into punk rock, I started mail-ordering albums, because a lot of the record stores in my area didn't carry the punk bands from England or Sweden or Chicago or Los Angeles — Dave Grohl

Barry White, Smokey Robinson and Curtis Mayfield are big influences for me. But I'm also a metal head. I was in a bunch of punk rock bands. The Bee Gees, hip-hop and the Beach Boys are just as much of an influence on me as Smokey. — Mayer Hawthorne

I've always worn jewellery but for a time it went out of fashion. Like grungy and punk bands didn't wear jewellery because it was stupid. — Tom Jones

I listen to all kinds of bands. I like rock music, like, male rock bands. I'm more into that instead of female singers. I like Nirvana, Green Day, System Of A Down. I also like punk rock, and I love bands like Coldplay. — Avril Lavigne

All the selling out talk is really overrated, the funny thing is it hardly ever comes from bands, it comes from some kid who thinks they're so punk because they have a purple mohawk — Tom DeLonge

Certain punk bands were influential because I thought, If they can do that then I can .Hanging around those bands was how I started my first band - In Praise of Lemmings. — Boy George

TALLAHASSEE LASSIE was a record I wrote with my mom. A number of other famous groups have also recorded it such as Led Zeppelin (I understand they are currently touring) and several other English bands and also some various "Punk Bands". — Freddy Cannon

The deaf people there with balloons, holding them up and feeling the vibrations of the balloons to the Germs, all these fuckin' great bands, and using these balloons and dancing around. For a tough old punk, it just made your heart
it gave you that beautiful feeling. They loved the music, and we were making money for them. — Jack Boulware

I was in lots of dodgy bands growing up and I always fancied myself in a band. But, you know, I was rubbish at writing music. So maybe one day I'll play a rock star, or punk rocker. — Gemma Arterton

I was in bands, but they were punk bands, and you plug in the guitars, you turn them up really loud, you've got four or five other people on stage with you, you've got some protection from when they throw lighters. You can always hide behind the lead singer or the bass player. — Oscar Isaac

The bands you like and know that are French are always outsiders in the French music industry - Daft Punk, Air. — Laurent Brancowitz

I love dancing, but I'm not that good of a singer. I sang in punk rock bands in high school and college and stuff, but that mostly involved lots of screaming. — Brian Dietzen

I came up playing in both punk rock bands and hip-hop bands, and I found a more universal way of reaching people, especially with music that has a message to it. — Michael Franti

Growing up in San Diego, I can remember going with my brother to see bands like Pennywise and NOFX - good punk bands that were fast and tight. — Vic Fuentes

All of the punk-rock bands of the era would come in and play, and my job on Punk Rock Night was that I would go into the slam pit, and ... I was 24 or 25, and I'd slam dance in the pit. — William Forsythe

I started going to Madame Louise's, the lesbian club where all the punk bands used to go - the Sex Pistols, the Clash. I remember seeing Billy Idol walk in there; he was gorgeous. — Boy George

Disco satisfied social as well as musical needs. Disco people got to dress up all the time and go to places ... where everybody sort of 'looked good' - and later, after an evening of chemical alteration, everybody looked even better, and the next thing they knew, they were getting The Blox Job. Punk, in the late seventies, purported to be a rebellion against this sort of silly behavior. Maniac bands started thrashing away in dingy little places with no decor, developing their own silly behavior ... New wave evolved from punk, basically, by sterilizing its own safety pin. — Frank Zappa

But there's actually a lot of punk bands out there that go out of the norm, use odd time signatures, or a lot of different tempo changes in a song. — Travis Barker

In San Francisco, most of the older activists, especially at Berkeley, were very hostile towards punks. The music, certainly, wasn't nice and mellow for them, and neither was our look or our attitude. While in Vancouver, the two most important early punk bands, D.O.A. and the Subhumans, were both managed by former yippie activists, who saw this as a logical extension of what they were already doing. — Jello Biafra

I started playing guitar at, like, 12 or 13 and just rock bands mostly. I had a punk rock band and hard core bands and all that. — Oscar Isaac

I do love dance music. I love Daft Punk. I mean, I was a child in the '80s, so bands like the Eurythmics and just so many great '80s bands were dance bands, but they had the whole soul thing happening, too. — Corin Tucker

I lived at the Gramercy Park Hotel for about 10 years. It was terrific. It was a pleasantly run-down hotel of the '70s and '80s with a mix of older, rent-controlled apartment dwellers, Europeans and new wave and punk bands. The room service was great, the hamburger was terrific, and they had a doctor who made house calls. — Paul Shaffer

I hated it so much as a child. I just didn't like it when punk bands went metal, it really bothered me. It was happening left and right in the 1980s. It started I think with D.C. bands - G.I., Soul Side, they went metal. Right at that time, R.E.M. was coming out, these more kinda feminine bands, and I was more drawn to that than to go metal. And you remember MTV, with the bad metal. But even Metallica, it just wasn't my direction. — Stephen Malkmus

I've been making electronic music for twenty some odd years but, because I grew up playing in punk rock bands, when I started touring, I thought in order to be a viable touring musician I had to do it with a band. I would DJ or tour with a full rock band. — Moby

A lot of punk rock. I listen to various stuff just cuz my friends now listen to a lot of different bands. I listen to a lot of underground stuff like jungle music. — Cassie Steele

High school and college were my punk, formative years. I was playing hardcore, learning to be a musician. In bands, you tour, but you're paid nothing; you're playing to 50 people in a basement, sleeping in a van, and you love it. — Steve Aoki

I grew up in the '80s and '90s listening to Public Enemy and Mobb Deep and the Smashing Pumpkins. I don't even know what it was like in the '60s - I wasn't alive then - so the Mayer Hawthorne sound is taking what I can learn from the classics, and blending it with my hip-hop DJ and producer background and punk-rock bands that I played in as a kid. — Mayer Hawthorne

We grew up with all the Fat Wreck Records and all the Epitaph bands, that era. We mixed it up together. We were never purists of being just pop or just pop-punk. We always wanted to blend everything that we love. — Chuck Comeau

I've always gravitated naturally towards a little bit of a heavier thing, having been in punk bands and metal bands before I ever got into pop. — Lights

People define themselves to some degree by the music that they listened to as teens. My mom had Elvis. Me, I had 'The Who' and later punk rock. Kids who came up in the '80s had other songs and bands. It's a way of placing ourselves culturally and temporally. — Jennifer Egan

Punk rock really influenced me, the basic metal bands, Zeppelin, Stones and Floyd, and Southern rock bands. I think I was pretty well-rounded. — Al Jourgensen

My whole back's tattooed. I just wanted a twist. I was always in punk bands when I was little ... I think that's where the tie comes from. — Gary Allan

I actually got into music because of art and because of skateboarding: All those graphics and punk bands and fanzines - they were glued together in my brain. — Alison Mosshart

I love punk, I love a lot of British Invasion bands, I love garage bands. — Anna Sui

I sometimes feel a bit embarrassed to play guitar. There's something - I don't want to sound ungrateful - but there's something very old-fashioned and traditional about it. You meet kids today whose grandparents were in punk bands. It's very old and traditional, but then, so is an orchestra and so is a string section. — Jonny Greenwood

Punk-rock gave music back to people. For a long time, when I was very young, I went to go see arena rock bands. I was 16 and it was all I could get in to see, legally. And I saw Led Zeppelin and Ted Nugent and Van Halen and all that. Me and [Minor Threat and Fugazi vocalist] Ian MacKaye would go to these concerts, and it was fun. — Henry Rollins

I was in punk rock bands, heavy metal bands, world music bands, jazz groups, any type of music that would take me. I just love music. — Reggie Watts

Growing up, I always wanted to be in punk bands, so I'm really enjoying the harder, heavier element. It's always been my dream to have people moshing at my gig, kind of that really feral element of the music coming out more. I love crowd-surfing. — Florence Welch

The first Decline I did was out of sheer love and appreciation for the music. In 1977, it was more about bands, because punk was a new form of music. It was groundbreaking and political. — Penelope Spheeris

The patches are the stories. Hold onto that. And the muddy zigzag of ducktape against the cracked doorglass. There's four kids who sleep here, a nuff for the fingers on each otherses hands. There's room in each of them for one important thing. They're a band. It's not they're in a band. They're a band. Four spikes of ducktape, up and down, like mountain peaks or a sawblade. Every band's got a sign, something to sew on your jacket, gouge on the wall at a show. Four spikes up and down say MEATHEADS, and you picked a fucked window to knock at, tourist. They're the best band in the world. — Noah Wareness

Punk rock and metal has always been a home to me, it's where I cut my teeth; and those are the friends that I have, and the bands that I love. — John Dyer Baizley

You know, punk bands now sell with one record - their first or second record - sell 10 times the amount of records than the Ramones did throughout their career with 20-something records. That's why I go over to Johnny Ramone's house and do yard work three times a week, just to absolve some of the guilt. — Eddie Vedder