Rock Stardom Quotes

Back when I was single and Guns were on the 'Illusions' tour, chicks were, like, left and right. They were falling over themselves. And I saw the sadness in that. The first six months of that, it's like, 'Killer! Chicks are hot. They're into me.' And then you realize they're not really into you. They're into the guy they saw on the JumboTron.

You know, rock stardom... I have a hard time discussing that because I don't really accept it. It's not really that tangible. What's really bizarre is how it's used as a thing - you know, 'He's the rock star of politics,' 'He's the rock star of quarterbacks' - like it's the greatest thing in the world.

When I was a kid, everyone wanted to be in a band - that was the path to girls, adulation, money.

It was great to be the rock comic, the shock comic. But after you've played Giants Stadium with Bon Jovi in front of 82,000 people, after you've done the 'Wild Thing' video with Jessica Hahn and every rock band from hell, you're not gonna top that.

If you'd asked me when I was six, 16, and 26, I wanted nothing more than to be a big, recognized rock star. Especially when I was six and 16, because I thought that if I was a known guitar player in a known band, only cute girls would talk to me.

Hometown Aerosmith fans are different from other Aerosmith fans, and that mainly has to do with Joe Perry. It's tough to overstate his strange grip on the local psyche. Tyler is a star who belongs to the whole world, but Perry, that dude belongs to Boston.

My friends have always told me that rock stardom was wasted on me.

Pop stardom is not very compelling. I'm much more interested in a relationship between performer and audience that is of equals. I came up through folk music, and there's no pomp and circumstance to the performance. There's no, like, 'I'll be the rock star, you be the adulating fan.'

Rock stardom and all that stuff like that was never like my main M.O., my main M.O. is musical growth, and if I become a rock star in the process, great!

I worked with Paul McCartney for a while and saw what it does to you to be treated like a god for twenty years.

When Nirvana became popular, you could very easily slip and get lost during that storm. I fortunately had really heavy anchors - old friends, family.

Peter Townshend shows us it's all right to grow up. There is dignity after rock'n'roll.

It isn't necessary to be an untouchable rock-icon guy surrounded by bodyguards and be ushered in and out and have everyone do everything for you. It isn't necessary to change the way you present your band to the public just because you're successful. That happened a lot in the '80s: there was a school of thought that said people would like you more if you acted like you were the unattainable star.

People love Axl [Rose] with the original band, they love him on his own but they want to see him with the original guys.

INXS never had that groupie thing. No, no we really never did. Not in a sexual way - well, alright, then, maybe years ago. I've done a few stupid things in my time, but you've got to have respect for yourself, otherwise you end up getting used

You know, most people, they want to go to Hollywood. They want to be a star. They want to be a rock star. That thought never entered any of our minds, the Van Halen family.

We never thought that we would be more than an opening act.

Roadrunner wanted to make Born in the Flood the next Nickelback, but I didn't want to be that. I didn't want to be a huge rock star playing songs I didn't like. I didn't want to be stuck playing 'Anthem,' the song everybody liked but I didn't want to put on the record, for the next five years.

In rock stardom there's an absolute economic upside to self-destruction.

I want to be in the best band in the world again.

The late '90s were a really bad time for people trying to be rock stars, you know what I mean? It seemed like everyone was a one-hit wonder on the radio. We had friends who had a hit single on the radio and sold 500,000 records, and then they couldn't get arrested a year later. I had this feeling at the time that that was not possible anymore, so the idea of becoming the biggest band in the country—it seemed laughable. I felt that having those sort of ambitions was foolish, because there was no way that was going to be possible. If you saw it that way, you were just deluding yourself.

We had no sleep or days off or anything like that and then, when the band became big, Hendrix became a star and looked down at us lot.

Rock stardom will die because nobody will make enough money any more to be rock stars.