Ryan Ross Quotes

People in England were coming up to me, saying, My mother and father turned me on to your music. This happened to me 20 years ago. When I was 40 they were saying that.

My parents were always playing records: My mom was really into the Beatles and Fleetwood Mac, and my dad was more Billy Squire, Whitesnake, '80s hair metal. But I think there's that crucial point where you become an adolescent and you don't want to listen to your parents' music.

In my experience, my music has drawn people of all ages, which is a real wonderful thing. And at my gigs you get everyone from six year olds to 90 year olds. And I find that really quite moving, actually.

If I wasn't making music I'd still be listening to it and talking about it. That's why I'm able to chill with Denzel Curry and then Jeff Tweedy, because the thing that's linking us is music.

Everybody can dig The Beatles, but why should everybody dig us?

I love how Duran Duran had the female fan base, then it grew until males started to like them, too.

My parents are music fans, even though neither of them play an instrument. I was exposed to their record collection, so I love everything from Joni Mitchell to Bruce Springsteen.

Maybe one day music will just be music, and there won't be these categories; it'll just be different shades of music.

On my US tour maybe three out of 30 shows there was an Elvis impersonator in the crowd but that's it. I usually get younger fans, and those that come that are of an older generation end up walking out because it's too loud.

It's the same thing now. When I go onstage the young people scream and holler as much as the older generation.

Everybody's not going to like jazz, let's just be honest about it. Everybody doesn't like everything. There's a disconnect in generations and some people just aren't going to feel that music.

I'm not really a strange person or anything, so if there's music I like, usually there's other people who like it too.

It's important that when kids are listening to my music they don't think of it as their parent's music.

If you want to be negative about the whole thing you can say all guitar bands after the Beatles were just a waste of time because the Beatles were the best. I think it's far better to give new records a try.

A well-rounded performer will listen to all kinds of music. I like classical, Middle Eastern, and rock a lot.

It was a free-for-all with music when I was growing up. My mother was a huge music fanatic so I was listening to everything from country to heavy metal to Indigo Girls to Elton John. I guess when I was really young I didn't like Willie Nelson, and she obviously loved him. Now I do too, I'm so thankful to her for playing his music nonstop.

Younger people are discovering my work, even though my reggae is not like theirs.

I'm not a culture snob. So while, of course, I think the Mozart 'Requiem' or, say, Beethoven's 'Ninth' are some of the greatest works of art in the history of humankind, that's not to say the Beatles or Queen or Simon and Garfunkel aren't brilliant, beautiful, important works of art that should be sung without a sense of irony.

It's interesting, as I said on the last tour in America, the audience actually came out, they had to have been the kind of fans who listened to my music via their parents, you know what I mean?

Because with Black Label and all the fans it's just one big family.

I've always believed in good music over bad music. I believe in two sorts of musics. And the lines that separate us, I don't believe in that. That's for people who need to easily define what they're hearing. Me, I'm cool with everything and anything I'm hearing that's music. It comes under one definition for me.

Kids bring their mothers and grandmothers to our concerts. You don't see that with a lot of artists today.

My mum wasn't the sort of person who would ordinarily listen to heavy metal. But she thinks Babymetal's songs are cool. She's a big fan.

We certainly are proud of our punk-rock heritage, but when people who like other kinds of music are into your band, it's flattering.

When I walk around on the street and someone comes up to me, I have just as many full-grown men with large beards in Slipknot shirts saying he likes my band as much as I do girls with bright pink hair.