Graham Coxon Quotes

I'm not an '80s fan. I'm more '70s New York pre-punk kind of thing, and I guess I grew up with '90s grunge, post-punk pop music.

It's the faster bands that made me want to play guitar, bands like The Jam.

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

Too pop for punk, too 'old school' for the New Wave, Mumps were a '70s era New York rock band, out of time.

Things that excite me are these four different bands: Wire, with a song called 'Champs,' Misfits, with a song called 'Hybrid Moments,' R. Stevie Moore, and Wipers 'Wait A Minute.'

People say I sound a lot like the Ramones and it's probably because I'm influenced by the same '60s groups, but I was never a strict Ramones fan.

Like, Mission Of Burma to me always sounded almost like they were part of the British Arty New Wave. I kind of like that. I like not being able to tell the difference.

I've not been an admirer of contemporary music since punk rock went off the boil in 1977, but once a year I'll listen to 'Spiral Scratch' by the Buzzcocks, or 'Hippy Hippy Shake' by the Swinging Blue Jeans. Otherwise, I can put up with Chopin or shakuhachi flute in the background.

A lot of people don't know that the Go-Go's came from the L.A. punk scene.

We're more of a rock band and we have a punk influence and a pop influence.

Okay, I like the Clash. I like Tears for Fears. I like A-ha.

The Go-Go's were a frothy pop band. I wanted to do music that had a harder edge.

I listen to everything from The Cure and The Clash to Prince and George Clinton.

The early music I heard was Top of the Pops. But in bedrooms, around the house with my brother playing the Sex Pistols, Sham 69 and the Ham and all these groups then going into that sort of mod turnover scene and then going into the New Romantics scene the coming of age myself in the mid-eighties and into the noughties, it was changing.

A formidable game of 'Name That Influence' could be based on the music of the seductive rock duo Girls: The band's first single, 'Hellhole Ratrace,' would barely reach its opening words before screams of 'Elvis Costello!' and 'Wreckless Eric!' drown out the music.

I love the song 'Into the Night.' It's Roy Orbison meets David Lynch meets Iggy Pop on amphetamines. It has a punk edge that is not HIM, per se. It is super melodic and super '60s, and that is very new to me and it is a sense of achievement to me.

When I started out as a music journalist, at the end of the 1980s, it was generally assumed that we were living through the lamest music era the world would ever see. But those were also the years when hip-hop exploded, beatbox disco soared, indie rock took off, and new wave invented a language of teen angst.

I started making music with my band in the '80s, so I am more product of post punk than classical music, and I have always carried on this way.

I was real into Devo, Pavement, Captain Beefheart, and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

I loved the MC5 and the Stooges, but also, the British Invasion - the Kinks and the Yardbirds - and then Led Zeppelin, of course. Alice Cooper was one of my favorite bands.

It was a really interesting time in New York in the late 70s and early 80s, and the music scene was really, really interesting because you didn't have to be a virtuoso to make music, it was more about your desire to express things.

A lot of power-pop comes out of LA, a lot of speed metal comes out of New York.

When I was little, people like Talking Heads were on the radio. There was something geeky yet groundbreaking about them.

When I was 14 years old, I was a huge fan of the Velvets, the Stooges and the Modern Lovers. They are my three favourite bands. I never get sick of 'em.

I listen to a lot of indie or rock music.