David Johansen Quotes

I think we as a band, as individuals, understand that all popular music stems from blues and jazz and even pop, but rock 'n' roll especially comes from blues.

If you don't know the blues... there's no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music.

I mean, rock 'n' roll is based on the blues, whether people want to know that or not.

Popular music has always been rooted in the blues, whether it's Adele or Led Zeppelin or Sam Cooke. It's just the beat that changes.

You don't have to play the blues to play rock 'n' roll, but that's where, somewhere along the line, your influences came from. I mean, I don't care where you got it from. If you got it from Eric Clapton, he got it from the blues.

Blues and jazz are such a root to music.

I'm a rock/blues guitar player. I'm not wanting to be a pop star or anything.

I think, actually, that rock and roll is a misconception. It should no longer be a term for music.

The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits

I learned jazz; that comes from blues. I learned rock; that comes from blues. I learned pop; that comes from blues. Even dance, that comes from blues, with the answer-and-response.

These days, rock 'n' roll is much more about rock than about roll. I don't do rock. But I'm interested in that roll part, because that's the funny little bit that makes it hip.

In England, rock music very rarely infiltrates the charts, but country music even less so.

My take on rap is driven by straightforward American southern rock and blues.

I've got wide tastes, but I don't like jazz.

It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive character.

When I listen to most forms of music, in their most raw and pure, it all has a punk edge to me, like Lead Belly, Jimmie Rodgers, Otis Redding or Nirvana.

Kids like classic rock, and so do adults.

Rock and roll and swing never quite mixed. Rock and roll came in and just blew everything out of the water. Big bands were dead.

To me, the sax is rock n' roll, even though electric guitars kind of pushed it aside for a while.

Blues is a big part of rock and roll. The best rock and roll got its birth in the blues. You hear it in Little Richard and Chuck Berry.

I like pop music. I consider rock 'n' roll to be a branch of pop music.

Rock 'n' roll guitar came from blues guitar. It was the blues guys who first turned the amp up and started whacking on the Stratocaster and a Les Paul. It wasn't the country guys and it wasn't the white guys; it was the Blues guys. That's where the real fire is in all of this rock and roll music.

I love blues, mellow rock 'n' roll.

I think of rock 'n' roll as a combination of country blues and swing band music, not Chicago blues, and modern pop.

It's rooted in things that maybe older people or people my age remember as being rock music. But at the same time, I don't think we're stuck in the past or retro. I think we've tried to push ourselves and experiment with what we can call Wilco music.