Art Rock 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.

Coming from the U.K., I can think of so many great songs and musical moments that didn't require a belter of a voice; my favorite singer is Kate Bush and she's not a belter, or PJ Harvey... I'm definitely more of an alternative girl.

I hated most music in the 1970s, especially disco, but Bowie was edgier.

'Europe '72' was a super influential record full of fantastic songs and amazing experimental musicianship. I always valued both of those aspects in what Sonic Youth has done through the years - being able to get very abstract and very concrete within the same song.

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 guess, people like myself and Roxy Music that had a different agenda about taking up music.

In the old days, maybe we'd come across Captain Beefheart, buy a record, go, 'This is great!' and notice how his music is evolving, changing, and becoming more complex, more radical. And we would follow that progression and see it reflected in the alternative culture it came from.

To me, prog-rock is ELP. And for me personally, that stuff is really boring.

When I was growing up, I was always looking for the most willfully uncommercial music: Whether it was Captain Beefheart or Frank Zappa or King Crimson, that's what attracted me.

Our music is an answer to the early Seventies when artsy people with big egos would do vocal harmonies and play long guitar solos and get called geniuses.

I think it is safe to say, as a huge fan of music, that between 1967 and 1972 was the renaissance of rock music. That's when all the forces combined together-the talent that was available and the freedom for the artists. The industry hadn't become so gigantic.

I'm definitely influenced by Animal Collective. I watched them early on.

Brian Eno records and music got me through. It made me feel like there were other people out there who had the same questions and fears and unhappiness. Particularly those kinds of artists who were writing songs about exactly those things.

In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.

The late sixties and early seventies were kind of a breeding ground for exciting new sounds because easy listening and folk were kind of taking over the airwaves. I think it was a natural next step to take that blissful, easy-going sound and strangle the life out of it.

Close to the Edge, Red, One of a kind, Discipline, Earthworks, The Sound of Surprise, all seem to me to be albums that captured the essence of the intention.

Some of the newer bands I like include Queensryche and Marillion, and I was glad when Yes reformed. Also, Kingdom Come; I was laughing when I first heard it and going 'This is outrageous,' but it's a really album. I went to see them play and enjoyed it.

Pink Floyd and Yes and some of the old art-rock bands, you didn't know what they looked like. You were always looking for pictures, and that added to the mystique. It's much more interesting when you're forced to imagine or guess at these things because usually it's better than reality.

I grew up in the '90s. I listened to a lot of The Clash, Velvet Underground and Roxy Music. I wasn't into Boyzone, or anything.

I was part of that whole early Moody Blues transitioning from a sort of R&B-blues band to being more progressive.

I didn't love David Bowie. Sure, I loved a lot of his songs, like everybody else, and, like everybody else, I had an incarnation of Bowie that I loved best - in my case, the solemn 'art-rock' Bowie of the late Seventies.

Mars is really different, into art. Lydia Lunch is more energy. James Chance is more commercial in a different way, in funk and jazz. They were all doing original things, trying to create their own sound and music. I think they're all great.

In 'Kid A' and 'Amnesiac,' Mr. Yorke's lyrics were often unfathomable, moaned and mumbled and forced beneath the surface of the music. In 'Hail to the Thief,' most but not all of the words can be decoded after a few listens.

I used to love Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, and the Human League.

I'm sure there is a group of people that assume Nine Inch Nails is just noise and chaos - or whatever it might be dismissed as, and sometimes is.