I doubt very much if The Beatles would have happened if it was not for Elvis.
I was in a choir as a kid. It was from those early days that my outlook on harmonies and arrangements were nurtured. I always took that with me, even on the earliest Bad Religion record, which strangely was only about six years after that.
I'm so jealous of my friends who came from these super musical households where they were learning piano at three years old. My parents didn't really play loads of music around the house. We had the radio, but they weren't teaching me about music.
In my elementary days, I took a liking to rock & roll music. I dabbed into Marilyn Manson, which became my favorite.
Kiss is the number-one American band in gold-record sales. In the world, only the Beatles and the Stones are ahead of us. Every other band should be wiping my ass. The line forms over there to the left.
First concert I ever went to was a group called The Yardbirds. Eric Clapton is the lead guitarist.
I'm a self-taught guitarist, but I have a classical music background.
I was heavily influenced by big voices when I was younger. People like Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, and Patti Labelle really spoke to me. When I got older, I was into Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, and Lauryn Hill, but it wasn't until I started working with a voice coach that I really dove into jazz music.
From folk to tribal to Cab Calloway, Cole Porter, Gershwin to the Rolling Stones, whose first record was all covers, to country-western, bebop, blues, and even the referencing in classic hip hop to cliched love ballads of the '80s or whatever - that is kinda gone, and that's just terrifying to me.
When I was signed, that was before the punk thing even happened.
I don't have technique because I never learnt any.
I'm not really a musician. I'm a performer, and I love rock n' roll. I've embraced rock n' roll because it encompasses all the things I'm interested in: poetry, revolution, sexuality, political activism - all of these things can be found in rock n' roll.
I never took guitar lessons. I took classical piano lessons from the age of six when we lived in Holland.
Black Flag was formed in 1977. We first recorded in 1978.
Pixies and Sonic Youth were so important to the eighties.
My musical education started in the limelight, because I found myself surrounded by real musicians, but after my career had taken off.
Why would heavy metal ever go away?
Hip-hop's always reached out to kids. If you look at the last 10 big albums it might seem ironic. But when I look at the history of this music it's always had a lot of positivity.
I was in a band in high school and college and I always had a love for music, but I didn't go to a conservatory or anything like that. I was fairly self-taught.
I've never really considered myself a musician.
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.
When we recorded our first album sixteen track machines were the thing.
Anything to do with the Beatles is very complicated.
When the Beatles broke up, I thought to myself, 'Dude, seriously?'
I would go back to the past and watch one of the early Beatles shows, because they were such a massive part of cultural history. As a younger person, you feel you missed out on that.
