Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie and The Sex Pistols may come and go, but rebellion remains a key part of the rock n' roll experience. However, that rebellion - the outgrowth of a youthful search for independence and identity - doesn't always take the same form.
What I've become good at is bringing things that aren't necessarily mainstream to the mainstream.
'Hedwig' was pretty much all the things I wanted to do that other people said I probably shouldn't do: drag, punk rock, stand-up comedy... You know, combine them all in a thing that's supremely uncommercial from the objective point of view.
I was typing away while everybody was dropping acid and smoking grass. I was known as my own square.
Growing up, my mates and I would have rather been Sid Vicious or members of the Royal Family.
That's just the way the world's going - everything has to be so instantly commercial that it kills anything that's a little bit underground instantly.
I realized how far-reaching the effect of hip hop was when I walked by a jewelry store named Bling in a small, rural town in France. Hip hop has made a huge impact on urban culture. Yet many brands still don't speak to young people in a tone and manner that's representative of them.
Rock n' roll doesn't change. All the idiocies and pretension continue.
The 'Hipster Nerds' like stuff because they hate it. It's like they ironically like it.
Don't try so hard to be hip. When the Church finds out what is cool, it is not cool anymore.
Punk was over in two years. That was the only damn good thing about it.
Ziggy Stardust, the Village People, and punk rock really shaped who I am as a person and as a gay man.
Ninety percent of the general public aren't gangstas, so all of the rappers aren't going to be gangstas.
If you're trying to get to the underworld of Berlin, it's not suits and ties; it's rock and roll.
I never felt like 'I'm an underground dude' or 'I can only be hot in New York.'
When I was a child, I was one of the kids who wore black all the time, and when the kids asked me why I wore black, I said things like, 'I'm mourning the death of modern society.' I mean, I was a riot.
Personally more so than shock, I think, rap music has to be born of rebellion.
I put the cult in culture.
I'm usually bored with both gangsta rappers and underground ones, too.
My parents were extreme left so everything was against the system. I was walking barefoot in the streets of Paris when I was eight. When I started to DJ they hated it, because for them, nightclubs, and all of this life, was terrible and fake.
Punk and all that was just an image that ripped people off. Johnny Rotten's a wanker, and that's all there is to it.
The freedom of punk really appealed to me because I came from the rules and regulations of studying classical piano.
I've always gravitated towards those ultimate lines in songs, the line you grab on to. That line in 'Smells Like Teen Spirit,' 'Here we are now/Entertain us' - the irony, the antagonism; that's always stuck with me.
Hip-hop kind of absorbed rock in terms of the attitude and the whole point of why rock was important music. Young people felt like rock music was theirs, from Elvis to the Beatles to the Ramones to Nirvana. This was theirs; it wasn't their parents'. I think hip-hop became the musical style that embraces that mentality.
When I started, I was 18 and really into punk rock and just wanted the action. Over the years, I've gravitated towards the travel and experience around surfing and trying to relay that feeling. Going forward, I'm interested in story-driven and personality-driven themes.
