Stephen Marley Quotes

It's my luck to be at the frontier of what looks to be a resurrection of roots music on the international scene. That's really what reggae music is about: that voice against oppression and struggle.

When no one's buying your records, it's easy to justify selling a song. But once you start selling records, you can't really justify having two songs in Cadillac commercials. It looks greedy. And it is greedy. This whole music thing should be about music.

I didn't want to be told what to do. I don't want to water down my music to fit into their formats. I know what rock and roll is to me, but everything's turning into one big commercial.

Maybe someday you can accuse somebody of being a poseur by selling out and playing blues music, but that's just not going to happen in my lifetime.

It's really weird how the rock world is quickly becoming like the jazz world. How if you do OK, or get a tiny bit of success, that's considered a sellout, whether you did anything different or not.

I am quite certain in my heart of hearts that modern music and modern art is not a conspiracy, but is a form of truth and integrity for those who practise it honestly, decently and with all their being.

I would rather fall flat on my face than try to just make a quick dollar by making music that fits into the radio format right now. It does nothing for me.

With Pantera, we lived through so many trend-of-the-day situations - when grunge was huge, we were still a heavy metal band; when hip-hop started getting incorporated into metal, we stuck to our guns and remained a heavy metal band very purposefully.

Any band that is out there chasing it is doing more destruction to music then someone who is out there playing what they truly feel.

You look at Michael McDonald and people like that; I think they just tried to write music that was true to themselves. That's our bottom line. Whatever people view us as, I think as long as we try to create good music that will win out in the end.

Most of the music you hear on the radio today is developed for making money. It doesn't feel true or honest. You can feel it in the music.

Pearl Jam doesn't just sing about issues they care about. These guys walk it like they talk it.

The artists in country music who stopped having hits are the ones who were led into something that wasn't them.

I don't feel comfortable making empty music.

There is an integrity to INXS, in the music, that makes it worthwhile.

The music industry can make you feel like a prostitute.

Ideally, musicians belong outside the Establishment. When they cross that line, it's like something in them has died.

To me, music is no joke and it's not for sale.

I don't need a sensationalized headline to sell music or to bring attention to my music. It's the music and it's always been about the music.

To say that an artist sells out means that an artist is making a conscious choice to compromise his music, to to weaken his music for the sake of commercial gain.

If you are too overwhelmed, then when you sit down and try to write something, it feels forced. There's nothing worse than forced music. I mean, this world has enough of that right now, where it's basically McDonald's making music. 'Everybody needs another hamburger and fries.' Here's a piece of crap that nobody's gonna care about it two years.

It was a great time to be making music because everything else was changing.

I did not want to be somebody who lived off his reputation. I wanted to continue to be part of the modern music scene.

When I was a kid growing up in the '60s, music was an outlet for enlightenment, frustration, rebellion. It was more about individualism. Today it's just like a big business.

Ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to play music that I liked, and even when I was in cover bands when I was a teenager we only played cover tunes that we liked. That was the simple morality that I grew up with.