Rock Punk Quotes & Sayings

I would definitely say the Oakland Raiders are the punk rock band of football. — Billie Joe Armstrong

There was a moment when Prince did rock & roll with a sponge-y seductive sound. I think that's what was in our head for 'Get On Your Boots.' But actually, the song is much more punk rock. — Bono

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

The Ruts were a great punk rock band from England whose songs were as excellent as their time together was short. — Henry Rollins

I stop and think what they call 'punk rock' today ... give me a break! Let me know when they can walk in the vapor trail of Little Richard, which was punk. You've got a gay black guy with a pompadour singing about tutti frutti with your white girl? F-k you! — Ted Nugent

It's funny how books can change you. You open up a book and one minute you are who you've always been, then you read some random passage and you become someone else. — Brian Joyce

Here is how the harmful becomes profitable: That which yesterday was reviled today ends up in Urban Outfitters. The critic Rebecca Solnit has summarized it this way: 'Eat your heart out on a plastic tray,' say the Sex Pistols. Now, we know where to buy the tray and what the heart tastes like. — Josh Kun

In the 1970s, we had Carl Sagan, and he was so suave with his turtleneck and his tweed jacket. And he was, you know, he made science look cool. And in punk rock, we haven't had that. We haven't had the Carl Sagan of punk. — Greg Graffin

CBGB represents a lot to New York City and to underground rock and to new wave and post-punk and whatever. But, you know, it's like tearing down the Jefferson Memorial or something. — Dave Grohl

Marriage is a long conversation, someone once said, and maybe so is a rock band's life. A few minutes later, both were done. — Kim Gordon

There were a lot of people doing new and interesting things with rock. But I wanted to take it farther than that. My real influence was punk. I must have listened to the first Patti Smith album 300 times. — Glenn Branca

The whole idea of punk rock is that you're dressing yourself in a crazy leather jacket with safety pins and a Mohawk. The idea of being the rebel is a boring societal idea. It's such a type. And that's what I was, without knowing it. — Michael Ian Black

But such people (Moderate Conservatives) aren't liberal. What they are is corporate. Their habits and opinions owe far more to the standards of courtesy and taste that prevail within the white-collar world than they do to Franklin Roosevelt and the United Mine Workers. We live in a time, after all, when hard-nosed bosses compose awestruck disquisitions on the nature of 'change,' punk rockers dispense leadership secrets, shallow profundities about authenticity sell luxury cars, tech billionaires build rock'n'roll musuems, management theorists ponder the nature of coolness, and a former lyricist fro the Grateful Dead hail the dawn of New Economy capitalism from the heights of Davos. Coversvatives may not understand why, but business culture had melded with counterculture for reasons having a great deal to do with business culture's usual priority - profit. — Thomas Frank

Back in the "leather and lace" eighties, I was the fantasy editor for a publishing company in New York City. It was a great time to be young and footloose on the streets of Manhattan - punk rock and folk music were everywhere; Blondie, the Eurythmics, Cyndi Lauper, and Prince were all strutting their stuff on the newly created MTV; and the eighties' sense of style meant I could wear my scruffy black leather into the office without turning too many heads. The fantasy field was growing by leaps and bounds, and I was right in the middle of it, working with authors I'd worshiped as a teen, and finding new ones to encourage and publish. — Terri Windling

If you've sold over a million records, you are not punk rock, you are milking the system for everything that it's worth. — Billy Corgan

Hit the Dead for they won't listen,
Hit the Dead for they don't know,
Hit the Dead they're all imprisoned,
Hit the Dead before they go... — Peter L Masters

San Francisco, America's B-movie imitation of Paris. San Francisco, the city that ruined punk rock. San Francisco, the most intolerant place in the country. — Jim Goad

The Rolling Stones are truly the greatest rock and roll band in the world and always will be. The last too. Everything that came after them, metal, rap, punk, new wave, pop-rock, you name it ... you can trace it all back to the Rolling Stones. They were the first and the last and no one's ever done it better. — Bob Dylan

A lot of people think that punk rock musicians don't know what they're doing. — Travis Barker

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

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

The word bollocks seems strong, punk rock, and imposing, but in reality, bollocks is always too tame to make much of an impact. — Jennifer Harrison

I had to get a driver's license and drive to St. Louis to find the punk-rock scene that was happening there. And there was a punk-rock scene. It was sweet. It was real. It was like everywhere else in the county. It was a handful of people who were feeling the same pull, and, of course, it was like the Island of Misfit Toys in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer [1964]. Just the freaks, the fags, the fat girls, the unbelievable eccentrics . — Michael Stipe

I had a big time punk-rock phase and psychobilly phase. I used to go mad for the Guana Batz. — Imelda May

I don't blame the average seventeen-year-old punk-rock kid for calling me a sellout. I understand that. And maybe when they grow up a little bit, they'll realize there's more things to life than living out your rock & roll identity so righteously. — Kurt Cobain

There are moments in our lives that define the people we will become in the future, like a symptom before an ailment, or the catalyst before the cure. — Brian Joyce

I put on some make-up, turn on the 8-track, and I'm pulling the wig down from the shelf - suddenly I'm Miss Punk Rock Star of Stage and Screen and I ain't ever turning back! — John Cameron Mitchell

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

Woody Weatherman showed me two beats, the "do do dat, do do dat" rock beat and the "ooh at ooh at ooh at" punk beat and other than that I was pretty limited. I had just gotten a drum kit for Christmas, which I was stoked about so I was ready to go. Back then, the prerequisite for playing punk rock drums wasn't very high, it was really pretty generic as I'm sure you can imagine. — Reed Mullin

One thing that got me started on it was the jean jacket. It's an item that could make you believe you're in the 50s or punk-rock 70s or grunge 90s. I was really focused on timelessness, and I think music is very timeless. — Drew Barrymore

To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful, freedom to be who you are. It's freedom. — Patti Smith

I guess it was only fitting that to them PUNK was a four letter word. However, to people like Dylan and I-punk was our hearts-our souls. We grew up with a lot of uncertainties. To be a teenager isn't always pretty, and our music reflected that. — Brian Joyce

Pledge Allegiance was a pretty generic name back in the day. In the 80's I was the promoter for all the punk rock shows and I'd book Black Flag, Dead Kennedy's, Minor Threat etc and I'd hook them up with places to stay if needed so it's hard to keep track of it all. — Reed Mullin

The jury had down right contempt for punk rock grass roots ethics. — Jello Biafra

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

'Punk rock' is a word used by dilettantes and heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies, the bodies, the hearts, the souls, the time and the minds of young men who give everything they have to it. — Iggy Pop

I play really bad punk rock guitar. — Rhys Ifans

Science is very vibrant. There are always new observations to be found. And it's all in the interest in challenging the authority that came before you. That's consistent with the punk rock ethos that suggests that you should not take what people say at face value. — Greg Graffin

Punk rock really came out of N.Y. as a philosophy before the groups were ever recorded. I had a kind-of intellectual interest in the idea of creating a new scene that could be a grassroots thing. — Greg Ginn

FICTION is a series of unintended coincidence,confabulation,and quasi-lucid lying made plausible enough for an author and a reader to cohabitate for a secret, brief and sinful affair. Nothing is real.Except imagination~with a pinch of perception, and a dash of collusion used as the Clabber.
Be So Advised. — J.D. Brayton

I love punk rock, The Clash, The Ramones, The Cramps. I love where it all came from, and music for my ears now, it has to have that same electricity, adrenaline and danger. — Imelda May

The first time that I came to New York to work properly was the mid-'80s, but I was doing eight shows a week. You have no life. Going to a punk rock club - or whatever the music was at that time - would not have been on my agenda. — Alan Rickman

Eventually, that feeling fades, but there is always the memory of those days. When you're young, everything is butterflies. What I mean is - it's all new. I guess he was telling you to still believe, to hold on to your butterflies. — Brian Joyce

(Punk rock is) lunging after some glimpse of a new and better world. — Lester Bangs

Punk is not just the sound, the music, punk is a lifestyle. — Green Day

Ed Friedman: [talking about Patti Smith] One time she told me, "Allen Ginsberg thought I was a cute boy and he tried to pick me up, so I said, "LOOK AT THE TITS, ALLEN! NOTICE THE TITS! — Legs McNeil

The boys in the office preferred Daft Punk and the song "Robot Rock" as an anthem, speaking excitedly and without irony about wanting to become robots one day. That made me wonder: Why? What's the pull of being a robot? — Katherine Losse

There's a punk-rock attitude, clearly, to 'Hated.' There's even a punk-rock attitude to 'The Hangover,' I think. We start the movie with a Glenn Danzig song. — Todd Phillips

I think I've always been extremely conscious of the kind of empowerment that comes from realizing that you're in a position to express yourself. And the fact is that - and this is the thing about punk rock - that everyone is in a position to create culture, and that point has never been lost on me. To me, that's an important political aspect of doing this, and trying to live in a way that's about dialogue as opposed to like spectacle — J. Robbins

Punk was just a single, venomous one-syllable, two-syllable phrase of anger - which was necessary to reignite rock & roll. But sooner or later, someone was going to want to say more than fuck you. — Greil Marcus

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

There are aspects of Asian culture in my work, but it's really rooted in an American experience - transcendentalism, '60s counterculture, punk rock. — Fred Tomaselli

I got tired of the Ramones around the time I quit and I really got into rap. I thought it was the new punk rock. LL Cool J was my biggest idol. — Dee Dee Ramone

Punk rock will never die, until something more dangerous replaces it. — Jello Biafra

I listen to tons of hard rock and metal, like Iron Maiden, Motorhead, etc., but I also listen to Beethoven and Mozart, to Discharge and the Bad Brains, and to Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington. So I think there's merit to both the melodic punk and to the hardcore stuff too. — Dave Smalley

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

In times such as these, life often begs us to seek answers when in reality there are only questions available. — Brian Joyce

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

When I was a teenager, science meshed with my developing ideals - such as the challenge to authority that was central to punk rock. In science, anyone from any walk of life could make a discovery that would overturn prevailing hypotheses. And that was a cause for celebration among scientists. — Greg Graffin

All you care about is how punk rock you feel when you wake up in the morning. — Lady Gaga

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

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

Everybody wasn't always wasted. Why is punk rock about getting wasted? Isn't it punk rock to be sober and change the world? I thought it was about challenging capitalism? How are you going to challenge capitalism if you're wasted? — Kathleen Hanna

I'd always wanted to make a record with Jim Dickinson, and I'd known about his boys for years, ... He reminded me that when they were 13 or 14 years old they had a punk rock band and I'd called him and wanted to make a record with them then. — John Hiatt

Punk rock, when I was a part of it, was called 'the underground.' There was something very attractive in all the hidden places, the hidden histories. — Mary Harron

The glow dies down, and she's standing at the end of my bed
the one who's been following me around leaving feather messages. I take in the torn fishnets, plaid mini-kilt, shiny, riveted breastplate with leather straps at the sides and a worn Great Temolo decal near the left shoulder. Her wings are a crazy black-and-white-checkered pattern, like they've been spray-painted at a body shop to look like hipster sneakers. — Libba Bray

It seems like the powers that be are really trying to separate everything and really divide the genres and divide the trends. If you're metal and you don't sound like Slayer would sound now, then you're not metal. If you're punk rock and you don't sound like and preach about what The Sex Pistols would have preached about back in the day, then you're not really punk rock. — Cristian Machado

In fact, punk rock means exemplary manners to your fellow human beings. — Joe Strummer

The popularity of punk rock was, in effect, due to the fact that it made ugliness beautiful. — Malcolm McLaren

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

. . . when my family headed out west, like any birth canal Rochester was forgotten. — Kim Gordon

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

Marriage felt like a fading American institution, as relevant to me as the Elks Club. Plus, I considered myself punk rock, and punk rockers don't believe in boring societal conventions like marriage. We prefer boring societal conventions like punk rock. — Michael Ian Black

The New York Dolls did not think of themselves as punk rock. There was no such term at the time. They were just another band in what was called the New York scene. — Todd Rundgren

To me punk rock is thinking outside of the box, outside of the program, outside the establishment. — Madonna Ciccone

[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

If I do a certain number of ads, I have to do a personal project in between, just for my own sanity. I still consider myself a punk-rock kid. — Aaron Ruell

Making a big fat deal out of anything is absurd. It makes much more sense to go after life with a sense of, "Why not?" instead of a furrowed brow. One of the best things I ever did was make my motto "I just wanna see what I can get away with." It takes all the pressure off, puts the punk rock attitude in, and reminds me that life is but a game. — Jen Sincero

And some people have less star appeal than others, but sometimes they shine far brighter than those with more. — Mickey Leigh

It's exciting to be able to do something completely independent without anybody challenging it, and it's a big part of the reason why I'm enjoying doing the stand-up comedy, is I'm able to go out and interact with people one-on-one after the show. It's very punk-rock. — Tom Green

Punk rock wasn't a career choice. It was a hobby that we did for fun. We never thought we'd get as big as our idols in T.S.O.L. or certainly not the Ramones. — Dexter Holland

And all I could do while I listened to this dude tell me how punk rock saved his life was think, Wow. Why did my friend waste all that time going to chemotherapy? I guess we should have just played him a bunch of shitty Black Flag records. — Chuck Klosterman

When Punk Rock happened, it created an opening in the culture ... it made it ok to think you could play music, even though you had no musical training. — Kim Gordon

Thank you for the music, Sleater-Kinney. This gang of three was the best American punk rock band ever. Ever. — Rob Sheffield

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

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

This is a night of your life. Live it accordingly. — Charles Romalotti

My mom was in a punk rock band called The Trash Women, and they toured and all of that. She had me when she was 17. — Kreayshawn

I'VE ALWAYS BEEN AN ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT KIND OF PERSON. HAVING BEEN A PART OF THE HARD CORE PUNK SCENE AS A KID AND LIVING MY WHOLE LIFE IN VARIOUS UNDERGROUND OR OUTSIDER SCENES, I'VE LONG BEEN EXPOSED TO "QUESTION AUTHORITY" TYPES OF THINKING. IT'S REALLY MORE THAT I FELT THIS WAY TOWARDS SOCIETY THAT DROVE ME TO VEGANISM THAN THE OTHER WAY AROUND. — Anji Bee

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

If I like hardcore straight-edge punk music, gentle psychedelic folk music, gangster rap, indie-rock with a lot of guitar pedals, and I find inspiration from all these things in different songs of mine, shouldn't I be allowed to make any of this kind of music that I want? And it's the same for the comic books, why should I only make autobiographical stories? Or only political stories? Or only superhero stories? Or only comedy stories? I am a bit creatively desperate, when I sit with a pen and paper I am desperate for ANY idea that makes me excited, I don't care what kind of idea it is! — Jeffrey Lewis

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling conventions. We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated.
But this strategy alone couldn't provide the distance I wanted, from Joyce or my past. After all, there were thousands of so-called campus radicals, most of them white and tenured and happily tolerant. No, it remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names. — Barack Obama

For some young people, their first experience ever hearing punk rock music was playing the Green Bay Packers on 'Madden'. — Billie Joe Armstrong

I've learned some of the greatest life lessons from growing up in the skate and punk rock communities. — Mark Hoppus

When I write in the studio, I tend to gravitate toward the ability to play really loud, aggressive, post-punk stuff, with big, heavy guitars and a big rock drum sound. — Tom DeLonge

Music never leaves you alone, and punk rock will always be there when nothing else will, — Pete Wentz

(Like a lot of middle-class kids, I needed my punk rock and rebellion underwritten by my parents.) — Carrie Brownstein

Even though we're not the most punk rock band, the way we've done things is pretty punk rock. Just kinda say it with a big middle finger to the record labels and do it ourselves. — Brandon Thomas

I don't think punk ever really dies, because punk rock attitude can never die. — Billy Idol

Dakota started laughing. You wouldn't have anything back there to help me tame a punk-rock wild child with a disdain for cowboys, would you? — Sara Humphreys