Quotes & Sayings About Rock Music

Rock music is some of the most impoverished music the world has ever heard, a fact that is hard to square with the sophisticated technologies that produced it. — Julian Johnson

I grew up loving classic rock music - The Beatles, The Rolling Stones - and then one day I heard 'Baby One More Time' on the radio and I thought 'What is this?' I was eight and it changed my life. — Sara Paxton

Times were changing in the world of id. They had finally fired Jason, narrowing the group to Carmack, Romero, Adrian, and Tom. But something else was in the air. The Reagan-Bush era was finally coming to a close and a new spirit rising. It began in Seattle, where a sloppily dressed grunge rock trio called Nirvana ousted Michael Jackson from the top of the pop charts with their album Nevermind. Soon grunge and hip-hop were dominating the world with more brutal and honest views. Id was braced to do for games what those artists had done for music: overthrow the status quo. Games until this point had been ruled by their own equivalent of pop, in the form of Mario and Pac-Man. Unlike music, the software industry had never experienced anything as rebellious as Wolfenstein 3-D. The — David Kushner

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

In the broad spectrum of the arts, two worlds rarely overlap - the literary world and the world of rock music. — William Boyd

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

With rock music, the amount of power that you can generate, the intensity behind the intentions of your lyrics that you can really reflect through rock music - you can't do that in jazz. You can't do that with classical. — Serj Tankian

I am not great in a crowd. I don't see a lot of rock shows because sometimes I am afraid I won't get out. I used to squeeze my little self into the scrum and jump around and cause tiny trouble. Now I just want to sit down and have someone perform my five favorite songs while I eat a light dinner and receive a simultaneous pedicure. Is there some kind of awesome indie/alt/hip-hop/electronica music tour that can do that? — Amy Poehler

I started thinking more about music. I thought I'd accepted the fact that, as part of "Being Gretchen," I didn't really like music, but in fact, the truth was slightly different: I thought I didn't like music, but in fact, I didn't approve of my own taste
I wished I liked sophisticated music, like jazz or classical or esoteric rock. Instead, my taste ran mostly to what might play on a lite FM station. Oh, well. Be Gretchen. — Gretchen Rubin

With rock music, it usually revolves around the band. You go in as a band and probably take about a year to record an album. But for a hip-hop song, you can create a track and an idea with verses and choruses in a day, and get three different people on it. It seems like you're able to do more with hip-hop. — Travis Barker

I really tried to push every genre that I could into this record. I wanted every song to have this feel, where as soon as the listener tunes in, they say "That's CoJo, that's Cody right there." That being said, it is a little different. There's Americana, there's Bluegrass, there's some rock, there's some really George Jones-style stuff on it, slow-style Ray Price country elements, there's some modern country, a little of this and a little of that. We tried to push a lot for show versatility, because I grew up with a lot of versatility in my music. — Cody Johnson

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

All of my favorite songs can bring me to tears. Some are rock, some are blues, some are love ballads. That's why I play music - to touch other people as I have been touched. — Kelly Blatz

Rock music should be gross: that's the fun of it. It gets up and drops its trousers. — Bruce Dickinson

We wanted more. We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the table, tapped our spoons against our empty bowls; we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots. We turned up the knob on the TV until our ears ached with the shouts of angry men. We wanted more music on the radio; we wanted beats; we wanted rock. We wanted muscles on our skinny arms. We had bird bones, hollow and light, and we wanted more density, more weight. We were six snatching hands, six stomping feet; we were brothers, boys, three little kings locked in a feud for more. — Justin Torres

Bowie talks in great, voluble torrents, darting from one topic to the next, parenthesizing and then parenthesizing the parentheses, as if he has too many ideas for one conversation. — Sean Egan

You know how they say Black Flag got in a van, and they brought punk rock to the world? The Strokes got on a bus, and they brought "downtown cool" to the world. Along with the Internet, they were changing everything, not just music. They were changing attitudes. The Strokes were making New York travel with them. I saw kids in Connecticut and Maine and Philadelphia and DC looking like they had just been drinking on Avenue A all night. Sixteen-year-old kids in white belts and Converse Chuck Taylors with the greasy hair - hair that had been clean a week ago. Those kids had probably never even smelled the inside of a thrift store before Is This It came out. They found a band that they wanted to be like. They found their band. APRIL — Lizzy Goodman

My songwriting is so influenced by orchestrated music, dramatic, super glam rock-y stuff. Two of my biggest influences in songwriting were Elton John and Freddie Mercury. — Brandi Carlile

I'm not saying that people have to listen to rock music. It's a great, cool thing and it can really be liberating for a lot of people but, hey, so can Charles Dickens so I'm not going to judge. — Frank Black

Rock music sounds like an octopus making love to a bagpipe. — Brother Dave Gardner

It's really vital to have rock music because it connects the generations. It's important in that way. — Christine Ebersole

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

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

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 don't limit my taste. There's some jazz that I like and there's some opera. I've been listening to what was essentially country music, but it crossed over to rock. — Rick Moranis

Playing rock 'n' roll music, it's going to be integrated, but being black you didn't want to go into some neighborhood where you weren't wanted. — Gail Ann Dorsey

I pick up the New York Times or Time and it's talking about the latest rock group, which I'm sure is exciting to some people, but it neglects a huge area of music. — George Crumb

I've always felt that rock & roll was very, very wholesome. — Aretha Franklin

Rock's always been the devil's music. — David Bowie

Art is sacred.
Punk rock is freedom.
Expression and right to express is vital.
Anyone can be artistic. — Kurt Cobain

If anyone asks you what kind of music you play, tell him 'pop.' Don't tell him 'rock'n'roll' or they won't even let you in the hotel. — Buddy Holly

She once told me of a night that fumed with escapes and was filled with bedsides reeking of ecstasy; she told me the stars cast not judgments, but blessings, knowing full well the disastrous outcomes of the deeds they cradled with the strings of their young hearts. She'd inhaled the night itself, those around her doing the same, and so all become one. No disharmony. No discordance. Nothing to shatter the cause; nothing to unearth the beauty. So as we together ascended that front porch, allowing the glow behind the blown-out windows and the odious steams plunder us from through the cracks ... time forgot to distill us, and our steps became as silver as glass. I could no longer deny the boiling words of my blood: tonight would be the beginning of a very long road indeed. — Dave Matthes

inquiries. You will feel it in the music and cherish it as the most magical part of the jazz idiom. If you don't, you can always leave the jazz club and check out a rock or pop covers band. That's perfect entertainment for people who want to live in the realm of perfect replication. Jazz, in — Ted Gioia

I mean, in rock music terms I'm like a dinosaur. — Belinda Carlisle

They don't want to see rap music. They don't want to see the Beastie Boys. They don't care what we're doing. They want one thing and one thing only: that's to see Madonna come on stage. — Ad-Rock

Until I realized that rock music was my connection to the rest of the human race, I felt like I was dying, for some reason, and I didn't know why. — Bruce Springsteen

One existence, one music, one organism, one life, one God: star-fire and rock-strength, the sea's cold flow
And man's dark soul. — Robinson Jeffers

I like all kinds of music - classical, pop, rock, electronic. — Ha-Joon Chang

We didn't go for music that sounded like blues, or jazz, or rock, or Led Zeppelin, or Rolling Stones. We didn't want to be like any of the other bands. — Michael Giles

Music has been my everything since day one. It's been my shoulder to cry on, my rock and my best friend. — Christina Perri

Take just one well-known event: The Beatles' 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. This has been depicted with astonishing regularity as a pivotal cultural moment; in fact an entire movie -- I Wanna Hold Your Hand -- was built around it. And that Sullivan episode was indeed a major event in popular culture. But did you know that in 1961, 26 million people watched a CBS live broadcast of the first performance of a new symphony by classical composer Aaron Copland? Moreover, with all the attention that sixties rock groups receive, it may come as a surprise to learn that My Fair Lady was Columbia Records' biggest-selling album before the 1970s, beating out those of sixties icons Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and The Byrds. — Jonathan Leaf

What's my age again? — Blink-182

Punk [rock] seemed like rock 'n' roll music utterly without the music. — Steve Winwood

Sherry Carroll is a real life Penny Lane and one wonders if she hasn't got Cameron Crowe or Lester Bangs hidden somewhere in her suburban basement. — Maria Waters

Popularity is like a girl in class that you can't ignore. She give you eyes when no one looks then turns to her friends and laughs some more. — Brian Joyce

Or consider "Here Without You" by 3 Doors Down, or almost any song by the group Maroon 5. Those bands are so featureless that critics and listeners created a new music category - "bath rock" - to describe their tepid sounds. Yet whenever they came on the radio, almost no one changed the station. — Charles Duhigg

We grew up listening to alternative music from the '90s, and there was no shame in being on a major label and still making the music you wanted to make. I feel like rap rock came around and drew a line in the sand, and everybody that was like me ran away from that and started making indie-rock. — Nate Ruess

Society gets by from the help of its citizens. — Brian Joyce

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

I just picked up a lot of classic-rock, melodic influence from my mom, music that she listened to, like 10,000 Maniacs, Led Zeppelin, REO Speedwagon and Yes. — Yelawolf

The whole Beatle thing was just beyond comprehension. When 'Help' came out, I was actually crying out for help. Most people think it's just a fast rock 'n roll song. I didn't realize it at the time; I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie. But later, I knew I really was crying out for help. — John Lennon

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

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

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

Definitely dub is in my body forever. I think I hear everything through a dub filter. Even when I play rock music, I play through a dub filter. — Meshell Ndegeocello

I like to make music, I like rap music. Even if I'm white, I support that music. If I want to support it or any other white kid wants to support it more power to them. — Kid Rock

Apartment windows are cracked open to the cold to balance overzealous radiators, and there's comfort in the sounds drifting out. Each window Amelia passes hints at the warmth inside: people talking, people laughing, kitchen sounds, the steady pulse of music. Now salsa, now reggae. Now opera, now rock. voices in English, in Spanish in Korean, in junkie gibberish. And she's a part of it, at least as long as the sounds of all those lives wash over her. — Cari Luna

I was really sick of bands just ignoring the audience as a posture in rock music. And I think we fed off each other in terms of trying to engage the audience, not in a hammy way, but actually trying to be aware of the space that you are playing in and trying to connect in some way through the music. — Win Butler

Over my career, I'd say the last 25 years; we've gone from music and computer being for 10 people in the world to having personal computers, to now being able to do amazing things on your iPhone, or with Rock Band. So, right now there's enormous capability with technology in our devices that everybody has access to. — Tod Machover

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

I like rock music that has melody, but it also makes you wanna get up and dance. — Albert Hammond Jr.

The nice thing about growing up in that kind of environment is you were exposed to so much
music, plays, art exhibits, rock concerts. — Perrey Reeves

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

The quality of instruction is very high at the Silverlake Conservatory of Music. It's not about being a rock star. It's about the fundamentals of music, theory and technique on a particular instrument, and playing in an ensemble or private setting. — Flea

I listen to lots of music, especially Bach, opera (all periods), German lieder, chamber music, and rock, old and new. I can't listen to music while I write. It's too absorbing. — Cheryl Mendelson

[Country Music] is the final destination for many punk rockers [ ... ] Rockabilly is the mid-point and then [they] end up at Country [ ... ] There's purity to that music and I think that appeals to a lot of punk rock people - the precision, the purity, and the directness of Country Music. — John C. Reilly

A good rock band is like a great lover. Their rhythms simultaneously jolt and calm you. They know when and where to tease you to make it feel the best, how to draw from you the ultimate pleasure. — Tom Leveen

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

My mom is Christian, and she wouldn't let us listen to rock music. So me and my brother, we had this tape player with head phones, and we locked ouselves in the pantry. We were fighting over the headphones, sitting in the dark pantry listening to Metallica. — Joel Madden

There are times when what's happening in rock is the best music in the world, and there are times when there is nothing worthwhile at all. — Carla Bley

Q: Why did the cranberries turn so red?
A: They saw the salad dressing!

Q: What was the Pilgrim's favorite music?
A: Plymouth rock!

Q: What's the best way to eat turkey on Thanksgiving?
A: Gobble it.

Q: What key do you use the most on Thanksgiving?
A: A tur-key!

Q: What did the turkey say when the Pilgrim grabbed him by the tail feathers?
A: That's the end of me!

Q: What did the turkey say just before it was popped into the oven?
A: I'm really stuffed. — Peter Roop

I don't really listen to rock music anymore. But were I to write a song that sounded like it could be a rock song, I'd probably give it to the Pornographers, and I'd be excited to try to make it work. — Dan Bejar

Commercial rock 'n' roll music is a brutalization of the stream of contemporary Negro church music an obscene looting of a cultural expression. — Ralph Ellison

Listening to hard rock on the subway doesn't work for me, especially modern hard rock. Driving in L.A. helped me to understand the appeal of that music. — Paul Dano

We really feel very humbled that we are a part of so many lives around the globe and that we can help connect people from everywhere with and through our music. My experiences with fans are mostly wonderful and I am always so grateful when I see what kind of positive effect our music has on people. All of our fan experiences are memorable in different way, but it is especially powerful and meaningful when you can feel that someone is really inspired with what you are doing. This is especially true for the young generation. It feels good to know that we can get these kids to pick up classical instruments and see them as instruments they can rock on. — Luka Sulic

Yeah, man I am going to be writing a book soon. The reality of being in a rock band in the music business'. — Steve Brown

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

I don't think our music has much to do with math rock. — Ian Williams

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

Luna Sea's music moves quickly but intelligibly, with a darkly frenetic, creative energy. — Josephine Yun

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

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

There's not much music I'll listen to if it doesn't have pretty heavy swing. Rhythm is so important. Punk rock would have more power and feeling if it had swing. — Greg Ginn

With Bruford, the album was One Of A Kind. All-instrumental, it possessed the kind of focused vision that allowed for no ifs or buts. With the unnerving confidence of youth, it had This Is What We Do And This Is How We Do It stamped all over it. — Bill Bruford

Music is like a psychiatrist. You can tell your guitar things that you can't tell people. And it will answer you with things people can't tell you. — Paul McCartney

When people say you're doing something radical in rock or dance music, I'm not sure how special that is. What we do is so old-fashioned. It's like trying to do something innovative in tap-dancing. — Jonny Greenwood

I prefer rock music - my favorites are R.E.M. and Matthew Sweet - but I think that if Dr. Buckley played Matthew Sweet, some of her patients would not like it. Matthew Sweet has a song called "Sick of Myself," and I am pretty sure that is exactly the wrong song name for a therapist's waiting room. — Craig Lancaster

If Elvis ..is the definition of rock, then rock is remembered as showbiz ... It becomes a solely performative art form, where the meaning of a song matters less than the person singing it. It becomes personality music ... if Dylan ... becomes the definition of rock, everything reverses. In this contingency, lyrical authenticity becomes everything: Rock is galvanized as an intellectual craft, interlocked with the folk tradition ... The fact that Dylan does not have a conventionally "good" singing voice becomes retrospective proof that rock audiences prioritized substance over style ... — Chuck Klosterman

Each time my mother went psychotic, I hoped it would be the last time. Afterward she would tell me, 'I think that was the final episode. I think I had a breakthrough.' And I would believe-for a few months-that it was true. That she was back to stay. Maybe it was like having a rock star mother who was always on the road. Were there Benatar children? Did they sit around and wonder if their mom's Hell is for Children tour was going to be her last tour? — Augusten Burroughs

A missionary should never permit himself to see a movie or (read) cheap literature, or hear music that tends to interfere with or which dampens the spirit of missionary work. There is ample evidence that rock music is offensive to the Spirit and affects adversely the spirituality of the missionaries and thus the success of the proselyting work. — Ezra Taft Benson

Not one person from the music world has ever come with - as if I could get a rock'n'roller up at four in the morning to play golf - but that's fine. I have way too much going on to sit around waiting for tee time at two in the afternoon. — Buzz Osborne

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

I don't like putting a name on my music. It's not just country and rap; it's got Southern rock, classic rock. — Big Smo

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

I have to admit I've found myself doing the same things that a lot of other rock stars do or are forced to do. Which is not being able to respond to mail, not being able to keep up on current music, and I'm pretty much locked away a lot. The outside world is pretty foreign to me. — Kurt Cobain

I'm glad people think I'm a badass. I'm a rock and roller, and I'm an R&B and a blueswoman. I don't do fairy music, although I love Celtic music and sensitive music. There's a balance between ballads and kick-ass songs. — Bonnie Raitt

I just loved classical music, but I also loved playing rock guitar, and I loved playing piano, so it was a natural thing that those things would merge at some point. — Trevor Rabin

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

It's just natural, it's not a great disaster. People keep talking about it like it's The End of The Earth. It's only a rock group that split up, it's nothing important. You know, you have all the old records there if you want to reminisce. — John Lennon

There's a difference between music that's original and music that's retro. A lot of bands now are kind of retro 70s whether it's Kraut-rock or ... I've heard people suggest that we're kind of retro 80s. — Bill Orcutt