1980s Music Scene Quotes

I really want to do a book on the history of the no-wave music scene in New York, how it extended out and formed lots of other things. It was such a great visual culture.

I was very good friends with Ian Curtis from Joy Division. In fact, I was the last person he spoke with before he died.

There were incredibly few rock songs making it out to the airwaves until the '80s came along.

With 'At What Cost,' I was basically reliving a time in my life during the go-go era. I remember when it was popping for my generation and how that felt and what it looked like.

L.A. has got to be the poser capital of the world. Around here Quiet Riot, Motley Crue, and Ratt are the heaviest in the world. So if that's heavy we must be molten steel.

Wreckin' Cru was a DJ crew. They used to call it that because it was the guys that came in after the party was over and broke down the equipment. We eventually made a record, and we had the costumes on and what have you. Back then, everybody had their little getups, you know, like SoulSonic Force, UTFO.

Back in 1981, the chances of a punk-rock girl band from L.A. doing what we did was completely nil.

The first Maiden record I ever got was 'Piece of Mind,' and I only got it because I thought the artwork was cool, and everyone talked about Iron Maiden. But they weren't necessarily the most popular metal band in America for a 12-year-old kid when I discovered them.

Everyone we knew was forming a band. Boy George, Wham! Sade. But it wasn't a big deal, they were our friends. It wasn't like we were hanging out with pop stars.

In the '80s, I was putting out an album virtually every year, I think mostly based on fear - that if I didn't, people would soon forget about me.

At one point in the mid-Eighties I shared a promoter with the Smiths. One night, we were sitting backstage when Morrissey burst in, utterly distraught, sobbing his heart out. Turns out someone had thrown a sausage at him on stage during 'Meat Is Murder.'

But the Go-Go's are a very original, kind of organic thing.

As Andy says, being in this band in the early 1980s made you feel like you were part of a pizza. We were always one of the band, one of Duran Duran, or one of the Taylors.

At some of the venues, the audience was so loud we could hardly hear what was happening on stage, which kind of threw us back to 1983, when we had very similar reactions on a much bigger scale.

Back in the days of the Smiths, when we first started touring England - this is, like, 1984 - there were these two girls. They were literally vicar's daughters, and they used to follow us to every gig, no matter where we went.

I've often felt I've been born out of my time, and when I started Fairground Attraction in the 1980s, I wanted to be a 1940s jazz singer.

Actually, there was another band where we were three girls, around '84 when I met John Zorn, called Sunset Chorus. It was just bass and drums and guitar- we didn't make any records but we played a lot of different clubs in New York.

I'm embarrassed to reveal that I never went to CBGB's in the '80s. I was never cool enough to be a punk, and I wouldn't have had the stamina, or the discipline, for straight-edge.

As iconic a band as Metallica has become, I think sometimes we forget just how raw they were in the beginning of their career, and to a 15-year-old kid like me, it was just shattering. I mean, it was beyond.

Back in the early 1980s when rappers couldn't perform in the fancy venues because the police were too racist and scared, it was the punk venues letting them in to perform.

It was awesome growing up in New Orleans because there were great metal bands, there were great hardcore bands, there were great thrash metal bands in the middle '80s and what-not. But then, take me out of New Orleans, and I moved to Fort Worth in 1987, and there's a scene there, too. And Texas absolutely has a different sound.

When heavy metal was really big in the '80s, it was huge, and then it kind of waned down and kind of came back.

Movies for adults sucked in the 1980s, and music for adults sucked even worse; whether we're talking about Kathleen Turner flicks or Sting albums, the decade's non-teen culture has no staying power at all.