When I was signed, that was before the punk thing even happened.
By the time I was 19, punk had occurred. It had a completely different cultural dynamic to it which rejected everything and started again from the year zero.
Punk was more based on social change than on music, so it didn't bother me too much. It wasn't really a musical threat.
When punk came along, it made perfect sense to me. I found it melodic. The Clash, Buzzcocks.
I never met Johnny Rotten, and I didn't want to meet Johnny Rotten.
When punk began to be a genre, people were going to go out and try to mine it. Some of the better groups, like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, were very artificial.
We were watching bands like the Ramones and Blondie and other bands beginning to ignite.
When punk really started to happen, it was a reaction against the disco craze of the time.
I was really into Blink-182 and punk bands like NOFX and MXPX.
I'm the first to admit that we were totally dependent on a particular place and time... for us, seeing Minor Threat at the CBGB hardcore matinee was just as necessary a force in our lives as the Treacherous Three at Club Negril or the Funky Four + One More at the Rock Lounge.
I was actually late to the punk movement because I was too young.
I loved London. In the 1970s... it was very exciting, really wild.
The Ruts were a great punk rock band from England whose songs were as excellent as their time together was short.
I always said the world is a better place because of Joey Ramone.
I love the Sex Pistols. I'm a big Beach Boys fan and a huge Zeppelin and Queen fan.
The bands that were big in '77, like the Clash and the Sex Pistols and Talking Heads, I got into them in the early '80s. And it changed my life. It got into my DNA.
Lyrics became important for a while in the late Seventies. Patti Smith was a poet and a rock star, as much one as the other, the distinctions were a bit blurred and then you get swept up in it. Punk poet, it's a good enough term.
We used to be either punks or goths - we hate Nazis!
It's funny I'm talking to 'Rolling Stone' right now, because back then, it was like, 'Punk rock? Put it back. It's just a flash in the pan.'
The Knack were a very, very powerful band, and you got to understand, when they came in, all the punk stuff was still going on. There was an amazing conflict within the scenes.
I think people are too hard on the Pistols. The Pistols started the whole punk thing and never saw much money.
When punk started, it wasn't subtle.
In the end, punk inevitably burned itself out and acted as a bridge across which the New Romantics could sashay in their chiffon and glossy hair.
I was a massive Sid Vicious fanatic.
I think English punk died in '79 or '80. Maybe '82 at the latest. As far as American punk goes, it wasn't the same as English punk. It wasn't a working-class movement that was protesting the conditions under which this class had to work. I don't think American punk ever died.
