Quotes & Sayings About Rock And Roll

I swear by this song and by all that I have done wrong, I will make it all up to thee. — Leonard Cohen

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. — Sam Phillips

If it's illegal to rock and roll, throw my ass in jail! — Kurt Cobain

The road of rock and roll (much like life) is littered with broken dreams and death. And it's our job to overcome these and to survive. — Courtney Love

I felt my way up the cliffs to the south until I found a patch of machair a few yards long and a few wide, where I pitched my tent and settled to sleep. The stars stood sharp above. It felt odd to be on rock again, not sea, to think of the ground on which I lay extending down to the floor of the Minch. Lying there, I could still feel the day at sea, blood and water slopping about in my bag of skin, the tidal churn of my liquid body, a roll and sway in the skull. My mind beat back north against the current, thinking of the puffins' flight, the lines we leave behind us, the spacious weave, our wake, then sleep. — Robert Macfarlane

I still believe in rock and roll, it pays my bills. — Jimmy Buffett

There's no place in the world you can go and not hear rock-and-roll, from Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder to Phil Collins. — Ahmet Ertegun

This was the plan: we would take a holy and sacred picture of the King of Rock 'n' Roll, Elvis Presley, to the very summit of the earth; once there, we would place it with sincere reverence amongst the chimerical shimmering palaces of ice and snow and then (accompanied by some weird Zen magic) we would light joss sticks, dance about making screechy kung-fu noises, get off our faces, and that would be it: Planet Earth saved. Simple. — Mark Manning

If you listen to the way I speak and watch the way I conduct myself - there's nothing about me that's rock n' roll. It's like, 'Hello, I'm in a rock n' roll band'. 'No, you're a narc.' — Henry Rollins

Oh, I think country has changed tremendously. I think country has totally changed. Country music when I was a kid was Hank Williams. If you put Hank and Elvis together, there wasn't that musical difference. But as the Beatles showed up and the English invasion, I think country music got pretty far away from rock n' roll. — John Mellencamp

I like all like classic rock bands like The Beatles and The Who and stuff and Led Zeppelin so I kinda dress like that. Kinda retro I guess. Well not retro but, like tight. I don't know. Like just jeans and shirts. I don't know. Kinda rock and roll I guess. — Drake Bell

Don't tell me baby you gotta go, I got the hifi high and the lights down low. — Elvis Presley

My father hated rock and roll - hated it. My first real argument with my father was over the Rolling Stones. And he never, ever liked rock and roll. He just liked me. — Patti Smith

Rock n roll is what I would die for, but I love music and I love exploring, taking the challenge of playing, writing or singing ... or producing. — Andrew Taylor

Take a dose of rock and roll, and wash it down with cool clear soul. — Ringo Starr

Groupies will give you Chlamydia, Edward."
"Right, Virg. Groupies throw underwear on stage. They don't throw flowers. — Andrew Barger

The nose can't help catchin' what the ears get sick with. Yessir, rock bands just sweat evil. Evil's been around for a long time, ever since rocks started getting real hot and making a lot of noise as they exploded out o' the ground and evil spirits wisped out of hell. If a band ever uses a fog machine, hold your breath so you don't become possessed by one. — M.C. Humphreys

I think that it was really rock-and-roll stars, women who were breaking boundaries with their bodies and their voices and their beings and their music. I spent a lot of time at concerts,just watching women rock out. They expressed so much of what I believed could be possible. — Eve Ensler

He shook his head at her question. Did women really think men cared about that stuff? Did he care if she did this all the time? Definitely, definitely not. He could honestly say he did not give a flying fuck whether this girl dragged guys home every other day to have her way with them for seven hours. He was just glad as hell she'd decided to do it with him. Today. And hopefully maybe again. Sometime. — Ros Baxter

I have so many songs, it's ridiculous. I love so many different types of music and tend to write all over the map, style-wise. R&B, rock 'n' roll, screamers, pop, good-time songs. — Taryn Manning

Rap is the new rock 'n' roll. We the real rock stars, and I'm the biggest of all of them. I'm the No. 1 rock star on the planet. — Kanye West

I love it [music]. I always have loved it. There's something about playing music that inspires me. When I've had some really down periods in my life, debauched beyond belief, not knowing what the hell I'm gonna do with my life, [Rolling Stones'] "Street Fighting Man" or something like that would come on the radio, and I'm pounding the dash and the rock and roll will inspire me to keep going. It inspires me. It's true. — Creed Bratton

I've always loved the rock & roll element to live shows, because whatever else I do, I'm basically a rock/pop performer, and that's what I like. — Marc Almond

There is nothing "still" in the remarkably visceral poems of Alexander Long's third collection, Still Life, and nothing is at rest in these restless and edgy poems. Conversational and kinetic, these poems chart the traces left by the shifting overlays of the templates of literature, rock-and-roll, and contemporary culture. As each poem in Still Life attempts to fix a focus upon a scene or subject, the protean natures under view draw the poet into the eddies and complexities of reflection. This is a powerful and moving collection of poems. — David St. John

I don't believe in any kind of artistic snobbery or musical snobbery. You know, to me, the sexiest and the most spiritual words ever uttered in rock and roll are wop babaloo balop bam boom. — Sinead O'Connor

There's no leader of this band, and there never will be. That's the key. You can't control how the public perceives you-people see rock'n'roll bands as the guitar player and the singer. — Shannon Hoon

I usually listen to classic rock and roll. — Caleb Landry Jones

I need more dreams and less life
I need that dark in a little more light — Fall Out Boy

Rock and roll just used to be for kicks, now a days it's politics. — Billy Joel

I think about cutting my hair. How nice it would be to wash it, run a quick comb through it, and presto! all set, ready to rock and roll. I sigh. Henry loves my hair almost as though it were a creature unto itself, as though it has a soul to call its own, as though it could love him back. I know he loves it as a part of me, but I also know he would be deeply upset if I cut it off. And I would miss it, too ... it's just so much effort, sometimes I want to take it off like a wig and set it aside while I go out and play. — Audrey Niffenegger

If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'. — John Lennon

The music I like to play is Rock 'N Roll. I like to rock like a wild animal. I like to rock it well enough to whip a yak's ass. I love to rock it good on a horse's ass. I like to rock it real hard. I love to rock it all the way to Russia. I like to kick out the Jazz and kick it out all the way. — Wesley Willis

Most comics worship music on some level. It's more rock-n-roll to get up there for an hour and make people laugh. — Greg Behrendt

What I would really like to have been, given a perfect world, is a jazz pianist. I mean jazz. I don't mean rock and roll. I mean the never-the-same-twice music the American black people gave the world. — Kurt Vonnegut

Every time I bought a Rock and Roll record, I bought a classical record at the same time. I like each as well as the other. — Klaus Nomi

You can take and nail two sticks together like they've never been nailed together before and some fool will buy it. — George Carlin

It's taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing. I'm not a musician. I never thought of performing in a rock n' roll band. I was just drawn in. It was like being called to duty - I was called to duty, and I did my duty as best as I could. — Patti Smith

Cats on the bandstand, give them each a big hand, anyone who sweats like that must be all right. — Jerry Garcia

I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice. — Boz Scaggs

I'm a huge fan of Canadian rock-and-roll. When I was growing up, Rush came out with a record called Hemispheres, and I must have listened to that record for two years straight. Even when I was asleep I had it on. So, yeah, whenever I hear a Rush tune, the first thing I think of is Toronto. — Kiefer Sutherland

I left rock and roll professionally at about 49. That's too long as far as I'm concerned. Some people can do it; it depends on what you were. — Grace Slick

James Brown, Ray Charles, Jackie Wilson, Chuck Berry and Little Richard - I think they had strong influences on a lot of people, because these were the guys who really got rock'n'roll going. I like to start with the origin of things, because once it gets along it changes. It's so interesting to see how it really was in the beginning. — Michael Jackson

Sometimes when I play that old six-string, I think about you, wonder what went wrong. — Bryan Adams

He ignores Ivy's request and keeps on. "You never told me you could sing like
that! Jesus, I don't know what to think about anymore. My honey knows she's the
worst dancer in the world, and Dex is like a fucking rock god."
That earns him a slap on the head from Ivy and an eye roll from me. — Kristen Callihan

Trying to seduce an audience is the basis of rock & roll. — Jon Bon Jovi

There's always a spattering of people who see Hanson who were influenced by classic '60's and '70's rock and roll. In a lot of ways, we're sort of the anatomy of a '70's rock band if you examine what we do: white guys who grew up listening to soul music from the '50's and '60's. — Taylor Hanson

I grew up with the Woodstock generation. I went to Woodstock, and like everybody in my school, I wanted to be in a rock-and-roll band, and most of us were. But I also grew up with a lot of piano lessons and a lot of classical music training. — John Tesh

Sports is like rock 'n' roll. Both are dominant cultural forces, both speak an international language, and both are all about emotions. — Phil Knight

You see a very advanced master who's got a girlfriend, who listens to rock and roll, who thinks about things that are very earthly. The advanced course has to with coming back to everything that you had to reject in the beginning and seeing it as a far greater infiniteness than everything that you've attained. — Frederick Lenz

He'd smashed my heart, thrown me out, and moved on with being the rock 'n' roll bad boy.
"Fuck him," I whispered. — Kylie Scott

When the first list was being drawn up in the rock and roll book of Genesis, it would have been: In the beginning, God created Pink Floyd. — Rick Wakeman

I love the classic trucker jacket as an icon of rock 'n' roll and rebellion. — Shepard Fairey

When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame decided to open up the voting beyond their inner circle, to the actual fans, that's when I think everything changed. — John Oates

My mother loved rock and roll. She loved high-energy music. — Patti Smith

He never ever learned to read or write so well, but he could play his guitar like he was ringing a bell. — Chuck Berry

It's really hard to make records and concentrate and have a free mind, because I have this whole other life. If you don't have kids it's a whole other thing. I think you can be fifty and still have a rock and roll lifestyle; you can still perpetuate that. — Pat Benatar

Buddy Holly and the early rock 'n' roll was no lighter than the way I play. It's very minimal. — Joni Mitchell

The piano sounds like a carnival and the microphone smells like a beer. And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say, man, what are you doing here? — Billy Joel

'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. — Rob Sheffield

Though many strive to hide their human libidinousness from themselves and each other, being a force of nature, it breaks through. Lots of uptight, proper Americans were scandalized by the way Elvis moved his hips when he sang "rock and roll." But how many realized what the phrase rock and roll meant? Cultural historian Michael Ventura, investigating the roots of African-American music, found that rock 'n' roll was a term that originated in the juke joints of the South. Long in use by the time Elvis appeared, Ventura explains the phrase "hadn't meant the name of a music, it meant 'to fuck.' 'Rock,' by itself, has pretty much meant that, in those circles, since the twenties at least." By the mid-1950s, when the phrase was becoming widely used in mainstream culture, Ventura says the disc jockeys "either didn't know what they were saying or were too sly to admit what they knew. — Christopher Ryan

I like to think I have quite a few different styles - sometimes it's a bit rock n' roll, other times more girly and feminine. — Kristin Cavallari

Hey, hey, my, my, rock and roll will never die. — Neil Young

There would be no Rock and Roll without Ike Turner, James Brown, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint, etc. Fake ghetto books and fake ghetto music. Elvis Presley, whom they idol, is merely a karaoke makeover of James Brown and Chuck Berry. — Ishmael Reed

Sold my guitar to the baker's son for a few crumbs and a place to hide. — Bob Dylan

The Pumpkins love rock-and-roll, we absolutely love it, but we also think it's a flatulent, ego-serving kiddie playground. You can have your cake and eat it too. — Billy Corgan

What I've always tried to do is to express the highest point of me, and rock 'n' roll is the first and the most open form created by our generation. The cool thing about it is that you get the power, you get the rhythm; you can be taken over sexually, you can be taken over cerebrally; it's great to look at - it's a package deal. — Patti Smith

I grew up around music. My father was a professional musician. We used to have a trailer house that we travelled in. I've always loved music. Started out loving to sing to the standards and songs of the early 50s, then that interest shifted to rock and roll, Motown, folk. — Timothy B. Schmit

Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock 'n' roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights. — Haruki Murakami

Why would you want to be anything else if you're Mick Jagger? — Keith Richards

I actually do see rock and roll as pop music. I think the distinction I was making was that I was going out of my way to have a very consistent approach to production, where nothing kind of punctures the reality - or, I guess, the fake reality - of the album and what you're listening to from beginning to end. — Dan Bejar

Elvis may be the King of Rock and Roll, but I am the Queen. — Little Richard

Daltrey was by all accounts the toughest man in the Who; maybe the toughest man in London. Filled with blue collar attitude, he strutted around the stage, screaming out the rage of a century of London's dead end lives, roaring like a young lion trapped in a decadent, dying England. Townsend wrote prettily, daydreaming foolishly individualistic dreams of artistic expression, but it was Roger's sledghammer voice that smashed the skulls of the enemy. — Dave Marsh

Deep Purple is a damn good band and we've made a niche in rock 'n' roll history. Maybe not a huge one but enough to be very proud of. — Jon Lord

Quentin flicked a quick glance back at her again. Poppy. This girl had the wrong name. She should have been Rose. Great face, lots of prickles. — Ros Baxter

You either evolve or you don't. I don't like old people on a rock n' roll stage. I think they look pathetic, me included. And the fact that I represent an era means I can't just go out there and do all new stuff. They would all say, 'Sing 'White Rabbit,' and I'd say no? That's rude. — Grace Slick

Violence existed before our music was even suggested. — Big Pun

Rock 'n' roll doesn't glorify God. You can't drink out of God's cup and the devil's cup at the same time. I was one of the pioneers of that music, one of the builders. I know what the blocks are made of because I built them. — Little Richard

I was the illegitimate child of the legitimate theater. I had no training. I came from downtown rock and roll, and when I came in and auditioned for the Broadway revival of 'Hair,' I had no eyebrows - kind of a Bowie-esque glimmer kid. And it was hard representing the flower power era when we were stone cold punks. — Annie Golden

The music defied classification. If I had been writing a
review of the show, I would have labeled it progressive,
guitar-driven rock 'n' roll. But the guitars made sounds guitars
didn't always make. Symphonic sounds. Sacred sounds.
The music dug in so deep you didn't hear it so much as feel
it, reminding me of a dream I used to have when I was a kid,
where I would be standing on a street corner, I would jump
into the air, flap my arms, and soar up into the sky.
That's the only way I could describe the music.
It was the sonic equivalent of flight. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

The new album is a childhood dream come true. Got to sing with Ronnie Spector, got to cover a bunch of songs that were influential in drawing a line between the punk form and original rock and roll. — Jerry Only

My advice to you is be boring, square, asshole parents ... When I have kids, the most recent CD I will own - Phil Collins, No Jacket Required, and I'll rave about it. 'Do you like rock 'n' roll? 'Cause this is rockin' good stuff, kid.' — Patton Oswalt

We're here to re-dedicate you to The Power, The Passion, The Mystery, and The Ministry of Rock and Roll. — Bruce Springsteen

I've never believed in so much as I do the BVB Army. Rock and Roll is my religion. And Rock and Roll is back. I love all of you outcast. — Jinxx

We [The Replacements] formed as a rock and roll band, and that was the path we chose to take. Whenever we deviated from it we felt, unless everybody was into it, there was tension. — Paul Westerberg

I have to give my family credit for putting up with the racket, because as some of you may know, its not the easiest thing in the world to live with a kid who's trying to become a rock and roll drummer. — Max Weinberg

The best designers and the best programmers aren't the ones with the best skills, or the nimblest fingers, or the ones who can rock and roll with Photoshop or their environment of choice, they are the ones that can determine what just doesn't matter. That's where the real gains are made. — Jason Fried

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. — Ciara

I love rock and roll, so put another dime in the juke box, baby. — Joan Jett

If you don't like it, Eat me. — Rae Murphy

To understand what's happening in the U.S. presidential election of 2016, you need to know what's going on in the year 2024! Soundscape: Where hearing is believing. — Royce Flippin

My music was too religious for the rock and roll stores and too rock and roll for the religious stores. — Larry Norman

For me, it's more about keeping it simple with a rock and roll edge. It's all about accessorising. — Lulu

Yeah. I know, I'm so bridge-and-tunnel - for as long as I've been able to catch the train, I've been sneaking into the city to go to Midtown. Hang out with the bankers, merge some mergers and acquire some acquisitions. The whole thing just reeked of sex and rock 'n' roll to me. Can't you feel it in the air? Close your eyes. Feel it? I — Rachel Cohn

Easy. They just let us forget. Give us too much to process, fill up every minute, keep us distracted, it's what the Tube is for, and though it kills me to say it, it's what rock and roll is becoming - just another way to claim our attention, so that beautiful certainty we had starts to fade, and after a while they have us convinced all over again that we really are going to die. And they've got us again. — Thomas Pynchon

The simple life is holding some appeal," he said and I nodded because I could see where he was coming from.

My life had been simple a day ago. Work, coffee, rock 'n' roll. Now I was being shot at, dragged around by bad guys and propositioned by the love of my life who I had decided I didn't want anymore.

The simple life seemed far superior to all of that. — Kristen Ashley

I don't like old people on a rock and roll stage. Me included. — Grace Slick

Ian Gillan, Roger Glover and I wanted to be a hard rock band - we wanted to play rock and roll only. — Ritchie Blackmore

He kissed her then. Not tentative. Not polite.
This was no first-kiss kiss. It was demanding. Dirty. And it went on and on. Deep, open-mouthed, head-twisting, tongue-fucking, rock'n'roll kissing. — Amy Andrews

My son is a great kid and does super well in school. I couldn't be prouder of him. What I tell him is, 'You don't want to just be known for being the son of a rich rock 'n' roll star.' I've seen a lot of kids like that. I want him to be happy, work hard and create his own thing. I tell him, 'You're not gonna be one of these kids up on stage playing with me. If you wanna have hits - write your own. Then we can play together.' — Kid Rock

I...wanna party every night and rock n roll all day — Kiss