Top 455 Rock Quotes

In this post, you will find great Rock Quotes from famous people, such as Dave Davies, Ednita Nazario, iO Tillett Wright, Minnie Pearl, Josh Homme. You can learn and implement many lessons from these quotes.

Latin music has many international influences – pop, rock, country, Brazilian sounds, and alternative styles.
Ednita Nazario
It’s illegal to be gay in Little Rock – this is such a reality for so many people, but once people get to these bubbles of New York or L.A. or Boulder, Colorado, they forget.
iO Tillett Wright
We have boys now, and men, in the rock and roll business and all the show business, who have this reaction on women. They scream. They yell. They do all sorts of wild things.
Minnie Pearl
The expression of this idea is Queens of the Stone Age, but the idea is that you will never slack on the music and will always humble yourself at the alter of Rock.
There’s a bunch of cities I’m not crazy about, but I love Chicago. I love the musical history – the mid-’90s indie rock scene, Chicago house music. It’s a great town.
I used to think of ‘alternative rock’ as a radio format, kind of the way ‘indie rock’ used to have more meaning. But it means different things depending on where you are or what country you’re in.
I’m not a big fan of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It’s just a personal thing, not an ego thing.
Steve Perry
If you break down most rock songs and look at the lyrics on a piece of paper, it’s all about melody. It’s all about presentation. And a lot of bands are really great, but you can’t understand a word of what they say.
I love ’30 Rock.’ It’s one of my favorite shows. It’s certainly the gold standard of comedy writing.
I was drawn to love songs, but I was just drawn to great music – no matter if it’s hip-hop, pop, R&B or whether it’s rock n’ roll or country. It could be a Garth Brooks song, and if it’s a smash, then I’ll love the different wordplay and different melodies. That’s what I’m a fan of – great music.
Future
In the studio you can auto tune vocals, and with drums, you can put them on a grid and make them perfect. I hate that sound. When someone hands me a record and the drums are perfectly gridded and the vocals are perfectly auto tuned, I throw it out the window. I have no interest in rock music being like that.
You can’t trust politicians. It doesn’t matter who makes a political speech. It’s all lies – and it applies to any rock star who wants to make a political speech as well.
Def Leppard is a rock band that can sing.
Vivian Campbell
I love rock music, dance music, so it depends on my mood. But I mainly listen to dance music before going out on court.
Rock and roll is the hamburger that ate the world.
I came into this whole business by going to see Rock Against Racism gigs with the Clash.
Rock n’ roll is not just a fashion statement; it is the attitude, and it has a political posturing as well.
Comedians get jokes offered to them, rock stars get women and underwear thrown onstage, and I get guys that want to take me fishing.
Rock n’ roll is the Devil’s music.
If I could dress anyone, I’d like to dress the Queen – she can handle anything. I’d put her in black – she never wears black – and add a little leather, maybe. A little rock n’ roll.
All us Youngs could throw. I used to kill squirrels with a stone when I was a kid, and my granddad once killed a turkey buzzard on the fly with a rock.
Cy Young
I was born and raised in the high desert of Nevada in a tiny town called Searchlight. My dad was a hard rock miner. My mom took in wash. I grew up around people of strong values – even if they rarely talked about them.
I’m a big fan of ’30 Rock,’ which I think is the most genius show on television.
Thinking about the cold weather in England… Don’t be afraid to rock the David Niven look.
I like jazz, rock n’ roll, some hip hop – I can’t think of any music I don’t like.
I’m not a rock star. Sure I am, to a certain extent because of the situation, but when kids ask me how it feels to be a rock star, I say leave me alone, I’m not a rock star. I’m not in it for the fame, I’m in it because I like to play.
It is a pity that instead of the Pilgrim Fathers landing on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock had not landed on the Pilgrim Fathers.
Chauncey Depew
Crystals grew inside rock like arithmetic flowers. They lengthened and spread, added plane to plane in an awed and perfect obedience to an absolute geometry that even stones – maybe only the stones – understood.
What I wanted to do in rock ‘n roll was merge poetry with sonic scapes, and the two people who had contributed so much to that were Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.
The Rock will always come back to us.
Vince McMahon
I like there to be some testosterone in rock, and it's

I like there to be some testosterone in rock, and it’s like I’m the one in the dress who has to provide it.
I find it hard to take rock groups very seriously or treat them with respect. There is something absurd about these gloomy young men getting together and banging away.
Have you seenAmerican Idollately? I’m sure that some kids somewhere at this moment are thrashing themselves silly over what they call ‘Rock n’ Roll.’
Pup, who’s like the most amazing, they’re keeping rock ‘n’ roll and punk alive.
I grew up listening to all kinds of music, everything from country to rock, pop, R&B and even rap, so for me, music is music and a great song is a great song.
All of a sudden, someone threw me in front of this rock and roll band. And I decided then and there that was it. I never wanted to do anything else.
Janis Joplin
Most managers in the rock n’ roll world… don’t care so much about who’s in the band as long as it’s making money.
As we move towards resolution and understanding and greater serenity in all aspects of our life, love’s pretty elemental and that’s nice to know. I think rock ‘n’ roll is the same. I don’t pretend to understand it; it feels confusing and frightening and wonderful.
The country experience was more of a departure. When you consider my education and my upbringing, you can see that was more of country rock outgrowth of my popular music aspirations.
Tom Wopat
In my view, the only thing worse than a rock star is a rock star with a conscience.
Well, Freddie Mercury is a really huge rock star in my head. I’ve always thought he was just so tough and such an amazing entertainer, really a contradiction in many ways as well. So he was incredible.
Karen O
There’s big granite walls up toward the Argentine border, but the weather’s serious, and a lot of the rock is mossy and wet.
There’s more to life than listening to rock music.
Rock ‘n’ Roll, no roses or gardening.
Tina Charles
You’re talking to someone who really understands rock music.
I hated prog rock; to me, it was the ultimate expression of a bloated sense of self-importance and mindless self-indulgence.
After we covered Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now,’ Brian May and Roger Taylor sent us a bottle of champagne and asked us if we’d sing it on stage during the ‘We Will Rock You’ musical on what would have been Freddie Mercury’s 60th birthday.
I hate most of what constitutes rock music, which is basically middle-aged crap.
In high school I wanted to be a rock star and was in a lot of bands.
I’ve always had the hair of Lionel Ritchie since I was a boy, but the mullet sadly is a hairpiece. My wife won’t let me rock that hairstyle.
So yeah, I play the piano for most of the show, but I like rock and roll.
Gavin DeGraw
I always want to rock.
I don’t know if I miss it per se, but I do miss the fact that there just doesn’t seem to be any rock ‘n’ roll out there anyplace. Everything does seem kind of tame. It’s even hard in Manhattan to go out and find a good band to go see.
I can watch anything from 1970s West Coast rock to 1990s electro-funk – I don’t care.
Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.
Style to me is a mix between rock star chic-quirky-sexy and expressive. I always dress for my body type, as it’s important to highlight your pluses! I like edgy clothes that have character. I usually dress by the mood I’m in – so if I’m in my ripped jeans and leather jacket, you know I’m feeling rebellious!
Jiah Khan
We thought that’s the way you were supposed to be if you were in a rock ‘n’ roll band. Flamboyant.
I have very eclectic taste in music, but when it comes to going to concerts, I like going to rock concerts.
Fran Drescher
I’m trying to make music that I like, and I love hip-hop. At the same time, I love guitar. I love rock and everything.
Our solar system is actually a wild frontier, teeming with different, diverse places: planets and moons, millions of objects of ice and rock.
My husband and I always have fun together in everything we do. Some people call me crazy, but the reality is that I enjoy spending each second with him. He is not just my husband – he is my rock and my very best friend!
People who like progressive music tend to sneer at the

People who like progressive music tend to sneer at the idea of a kind of punk aesthetic, and people who like alternative indie rock or punk rock tend to sneer at what they see as the pretentiousness and pomposity of progressive music.
I didn’t think you could just become a rock and roll singer.
You know, fame is a funny thing, man, especially, you know, actors, musicians, rappers, rock singers, it’s kind of a lifestyle and it’s easy to get caught up in it – you go to bars, you go to clubs, everyone’s doing a certain thing… It’s tough.
When the Eagles were starting out in the early ’70s, it would have been hard to imagine anyone in the fledgling, country-accented rock group someday seriously challenging the artistic punch of Neil Young or Joni Mitchell.
I’m a rock climber, a high-altitude climber, an adventurer, a storyteller through my museums, and a writer of more than 50 books.
I like Jailhouse Rock and Love Me Tender. The black-and-white films. With music, I tend more toward the ’70s stuff because I was at the shows for those, so they bring back memories.
I tend to support and get behind issues instead of candidates, because of the whole ‘Super Bowl‘ generalization of our world – You’re on this side, I’m on that side; you’re a Republican, I’m a Democrat; you’re country music, I’m rock music.
I guess the line between being paranoid and being a rock star is smaller than one would expect.
Brian Molko
I listen to everything while I train. From old school reggae, to classical stuff like Bach, to hip-hop, to rock and roll.
I don’t like rock. Honestly, I like to listen to it, but it’s not for me. There’s a lot of musical genres that I find interesting, but they don’t suit me. It’s one thing to listen to different genres, but to perform a genre that isn’t yours is counterproductive.
Luis Miguel
I felt that the elegance of pop music was that it was reflective: we were holding up a mirror to our audience and reflecting them philosophically and spiritually, rather than just reflecting society or something called ‘rock and roll.’
What I wanted to do was play the guitar but I don’t like instrumental rock. I think it is tripe.
I never wanted to be part of any scene, I never wanted to be a part of anything, I wanted to do my own thing. Those are the lessons I learned from punk rock.
If I go without rock for too long, I feel depressed.
Rock and Roll: Music for the neck downwards.
I wanted to make the kind of records that I heard in the discos that I danced in at that time. Funky, electronic sounds, while the musicians in the band were more rock oriented. This I suppose created the sound we know as Frankie Goes To Hollywood.
Holly Johnson
My fans are like, ‘Lab does what he does,’ which is really cool. If I came out with a Jack White rock tune tomorrow, people would be like, ‘Yeah, cool man,’ which is great.
This is the way I look at sex scenes: I have basically been doing them for a living for years. Trying to seduce an audience is the basis of rock ‘n roll, and if I may say so, I’m pretty good at it.
Mick Jagger can’t even make a successful solo album, and the Stones are the biggest rock group that ever was.
Don Henley
It was the early days of Rock ‘n’ Roll in this country. We were all struggling to learn music, it might be Country, Jazz, Classical, Blues or even Rock ‘n’ Roll.
Jim Sullivan
Everyone has a rock bottom.
Sure, my childhood was unusual. All these eccentric, wild people frequented our home: rock stars, drag queens, models, bikers, freaks. But I was not this little rich girl. My mom and I lived in an apartment.
If you believe that tax policy has nothing to do with the economy, then you’re pretty much like a rock, only dumber.
My vibe is a bit boyish: rock shirts, trousers.
I saw rock n’ roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
I still DJ the same way, but I’m not a scratch-scratch-scratch battle DJ. No, I’ll rock the house. I’m old school.
Of course having a baby derails the writing process for some time. And I will be the first to say that I have essentially no social life, because there’s just nothing left after being a mom, professor, and writer. I used to be big into rock climbing. No more. A lot falls by the wayside.
Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.
Frank Zappa
Dance music is no longer a simple Donna Summer beat. It’s become a whole language that I find fascinating and exciting. Eventually, it will lose the dance tag and join the fore of rock.
First, I’d become an avid reader of blogs, especially music blogs, and they seemed to be where the critical-thinking action was at, to have the kind of energy that I associate with rock writing of the 1970s or Internet e-mail discussion lists a decade ago.
Carl Wilson
Punk rock really influenced me, the basic metal bands,

Punk rock really influenced me, the basic metal bands, Zeppelin, Stones and Floyd, and Southern rock bands. I think I was pretty well-rounded.
Sunshine Superman‘ was a pioneering work that for the first time presented a fusion of Celtic, jazz, folk, rock, and Indian music as well as poetry.
The cello is such a versatile instrument. It can rock like the hardest rock guitar, and it can sing like the human voice. We couldn’t do what we do without the classical training. It’s a hard instrument to play. There are no frets, and it takes finesse and technique to play.
I always wanted to be a rock star. That was my childhood dream. That’s what I told everybody I was going to be when I grew up.
Chester Bennington
Achilles was like a rock star of his day so it made sense to have Brad Pitt playing him.
Wolfgang Petersen
I’ve been blessed to have insanely hip parents who think of me as their little Chris Rock.
I’m not a rock star writing poetry. I don’t feel like a rock star and I don’t know what one is, actually. I’m a goalie/poet or a hotel guest/poet or a father/poet.
We try to keep everything as in-house and small and as punk rock and do-it-yourself as we can. That’s part of our way of doing business.
Ever since the beginning of rock and roll, there’s been an Axl Rose. And it’s just boring. It’s totally boring to me.
I’ve been lucky enough to meet a lot of fantastic people, from royalty to rock stars. I’ve also been known to be a bit of a daredevil, so I’ve tried to explore extreme travel and adventure – scuba-diving in an arctic glacier and camping in the Himalayas.
We can get airplay all across the board, from CHR to Active rock.
Steve Brown
The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
Twitter is the new rock magazine of the modern age. When I was a kid, we had magazines and journalists and interviews and articles and pinups and posters to follow our favourite artists. Nowadays? Twitter is actually the new rock magazine.
If you truly dig what you are doing, if you lay it out that way, nobody can not respond. That’s what rock and roll is; it’s relentless.
Cass Elliot
I guess I look like a rock quarry that someone has dynamited.
I started doing ’30 Rock’ and started writing ‘Mystery Team’ at the beginning of that. While I was doing ‘Mystery Team,’ I started practicing stand-up. While I was doing stand up, I got ‘Community.’ It’s like I planted trees six years ago, and now they have fruit.
Most of modern rock and roll is a product of guilt.
I just like the blues better than rock ‘n’ roll.
Johnny Winter
The older I get, the more of an anarchist I become, and I don’t mean in a punk rock way.
Punk rock really came out of N.Y. as a philosophy before the groups were ever recorded. I had a kind-of intellectual interest in the idea of creating a new scene that could be a grassroots thing.
Mars still remains the astrobiology community‘s number one choice for ‘nearest rock with life,’ but there are many researchers who argue that the moons of Jupiter are better bets. In particular, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto are all thought to hide vast oceans of liquid water beneath their icy, outer skins.
I’ve always been more interested in organisms that can move on their own than in stationary plants. But when I canoe or hike along the edge of lakes or oceans and see trees that seem to be growing out of rock faces, I am blown away. How do they do it?
A lot of people call me the architect of rock & roll. I don’t call myself that, but I believe it’s true.
I have many of the Rock Lords; Magmar, I’m obsessed with. That’s a sign of how versatile the Rock Lords were, that they could come out with toys that turned into rocks.
It’s fun to look at people that are so good at acting that aren’t actors, like David Bowie creating a mystique about rock n’ roll. I’ve listened to ‘Ziggy Stardust‘ as much as any rock n’ roll fan – I don’t really know what it’s about, but it sure is fun to think about David Bowie as this mad creation.
These mountains appear to be almost entirely composed of stratas of rock of various colours (mostly red) and are partially covered with a dwarfish growth of pine and cedar, which are the only species of timber to be seen.
GN’R was five guys who were all into different things. I liked pop and disco, Izzy was into New York rock, Slash loved Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin, Axl was into Genesis and Elton John, and Duff was a punk rocker. We all blended that stuff together.
I suppose the best comedy shows do have the rock n’ roll feeling – if it’s a great night, and the roof is raised… yeah, it’s a similar feeling, sure.
Business people have been made into these rock stars because they’ve made a lot of money.
When it came to music growing up, it wasn’t just gospel and R&B. My uncle brought rock n’ roll to me when I was younger, and I loved it. I was open to all music.
I was a really crazy kid. I’m still a crazy kid. That’s the nice thing about being in a rock band. You can feel 14 forever.
Max Weinberg
Sex and drugs and rock and roll.

Sex and drugs and rock and roll.
Ian Dury
What you’re looking at there is my arm, going into the rock… and there it is – stuck. It’s been without circulation for 24 hours. It’s pretty well gone.
Aron Ralston
I don’t think there’s any such thing as rock n’ roll anymore – it’s an amalgamation of business interests.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is marketing. You’ve got a bunch of faceless people in a back room who trademark a name that sounds very official. Well, if you had thought of it first, you would have been the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The idea of the peace movement and of people who spent their entire lives trying to have a more egalitarian, just society, suddenly became swamped by the record industry, by the new rock and roll culture, and by the idea of not trusting anyone over thirty.
The problem for me, still today, is that I write purely with one dramatic structure and that is the rite of passage. I’m not really skilled in any other. Rock and roll itself can be described as music to accompany the rite of passage.
Music, Rock and Roll music especially, is such a generational thing. Each generation must have their own music, I had my own in my generation, you have yours, everyone I know has their own generation.
A lot of rock bands are truly a legend in their own minds.
Most people are living lives of sort of survival. And constantly posing an existential crisis, either through fantasy or oblivion, really has been pretty much explored in rock and roll. At least in the western version of rock n’ roll.
I’ll do a cappella stuff, rock ‘n’ roll and swing stuff.
Juice Newton
We put all these things together into a tangible product that is The Rock N’ Roll Mystery Tour.
Nina Blackwood
I am closest to my mother, as she is my rock, my pillar of strength, and my world. Not only has she stood by me through all times – happy, sad, and otherwise – but there have even been moments when I had completely lost hope, and her immense belief in me had lifted me up.
‘Amores Perros’ is rock, ’21 Grams’ is jazz, ‘Babel‘ is an opera, and ‘Biutiful’ is a requiem.
At times, my confidence is rock bottom, although I try for it to be sky high, thanks to the people that are always there with me and support me.
In ‘Pacific Rim’ I had to have a haircut I wouldn’t usually rock. However, the moustache I had in the film – that might have to come out again. It was a good moustache. Good times.
In general I was a good kid. It usually took a lot to make me mad. But once I reached the boiling point, I lost all rational control. Totally without thinking, when my anger was aroused, I grabbed the nearest brick, rock, or stick to bash someone. It was as if I had no conscious will in the matter.
I don’t know which will go first – rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.
Though rock is not the force that it once was in America, it still has a loyal fan base that always seems to continue regardless of what popular culture deems as the ‘cool thing.’
I was a sort of rock journalistwhatever that is – in London in the late ’60s.
The more technology we introduce into society, the more people will aggregate, will want to be with other people: movies, rock concerts, shopping.
John Naisbitt
We’ve been working on a new album, which is going to come out next spring, which is very different, a change of style for us – it’s going to be almost like rock music.
So when I got to be about 13 or 14, I started listening – even though my parents music was way cool – to contemporary hard rock at that time, which was Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Ted Nugent and all that, and that’s just where I came from.
I take smack because I enjoy it. I enjoy all it makes me feel. I don’t do it to be in with the in crowd. I can rock out with it.
Johnny Thunders
I’m not a folk or jazz singer, more a hard-edged pop singer – with some rock, and song hooks.
Especially watching him struggle, cause I was with him when he was struggling – changed his name to The Rock, all of a sudden he has the attitude a little bit, he started getting the mic, started cutting promos. His character just developed.
I love a vintage look that’s also a bit rock n’ roll.
What’s cool about indie rock is that one band can do effectively the same thing as another band, and one band nails it, and the other one doesn’t. I like that elusiveness.
New York is the dream world, the center of jazz and rock.
Too pop for punk, too ‘old school’ for the New Wave, Mumps were a ’70s era New York rock band, out of time.
Parents walk a fine line between discipline and grace – values have to hold even when circumstances change or call for compromise or compassion. It’s the ultimate challenge to be both firm and fluid, soft and strong, yielding yet rock solid.
The rock sitting on the shelf has potential because it can fall-it’s the same way with the Internet. It has this potential. It’s not really doing it yet, but it’s about to.
Singing karaoke is my worst nightmare. But in the car,

Singing karaoke is my worst nightmare. But in the car, I rock out to anything Bon Jovi or Beastie Boys.
Rock n’ roll is for the young idiots, not an old fart like me.
I can’t tell you what I had for breakfast, but I can sing every single word of rock and roll.
The music is at this weird intersection of dance music and indie music. It’s not quite dancey enough to do a full-blown DJ set, and it wasn’t quite rock enough for a rock band. But I guess it’s what makes us uniquedrawing from a lot of different influences.
People have to go through trials and tribulations to get where they at. Do your thing – continue to rock it – because obviously, God wants you here.
There is no singular ‘reason’ why Africans use fractals, any more than a singular reason why Americans like rock music. Such enormous cultural practices just cover too much social terrain.
Ron Eglash
The Academy Awards ceremony is designed to be without irony, but Chris Rock supplied it anyway with filmed movie-theater interviews with black men and women who had never heard of the movies nominated for Best Picture.
Rock Hudson let his gay agent marry him off to his secretary because he didn’t want people to get the right idea.
Anthony Perkins
We Americans think, in every country in transition, there’s a Thomas Jefferson hiding behind some rock or a James Madison beyond one sand dune.
It’s a dying art to play live anymore and just play raw. Who cares if you make a mistake? That’s punk rock. Just go out and go for it and make some noise.
I have to give my family credit for putting up with the racket, because as some of you may know, its not the easiest thing in the world to live with a kid who’s trying to become a rock and roll drummer.
Max Weinberg
There’s an edge to real rock ‘n’ roll. It’s all that matters.
With rock music, the amount of power that you can generate, the intensity behind the intentions of your lyrics that you can really reflect through rock music – you can’t do that in jazz. You can’t do that with classical.
How can you have a rock n’ roll circus without a midget?
All I really wanted to do was make an album that was going to be just back to what I like to do… And it was a coincidence that these new bands, this new wave of bands, were doing Alice and Iggy rock.
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.
I think my wife saw a picture of the rock group Journey, and they’re kind of aging, and the one guy had dyed blonde hair with black roots, and… my idea was to get a little earring, I wanted to have a dangling earring.
Rock and roll is here to stay.
That’s what Kiss is all about – not just music, but entertainment, y’know? We’re there to take you away from your problems, and rock and roll all night and party every day for those two hours you’re at the concert.
Rock and roll music, if you like it, if you feel it, you can’t help but move to it. That’s what happens to me. I can’t help it.’
We really wanted to be rock ‘n’ roll, so we became rock ‘n’ roll, and really good at it, but you pick up loads of layers and you completely forget who you are and what you are.
I think the hip hop world and the rock world still have a lot in common, but it certainly seems like things happen and break at a much faster pace in the hip hop world.
Bubba Sparxxx
Energy is so important. If you don’t have it, don’t bother with rock and roll.
The biggest problem in rock journalism is that often the writer’s main motivation is to become friends with the band. They’re not really journalists; they’re people who want to be involved in rock and roll.
My mother’s records were formative for me, but when I became a teenager, I wanted to find songs that she wasn’t hip to. She was so hip, though, that I had to go outside rock n’ roll – so for about 10 years, I only listened to hip-hop, house and techno.
I’d look at one of my stonecutters hammering away at the rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet, at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I knew it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.
Jacob Riis
After twelve years of living in Hawaii, I’d gotten a serious case of ‘rock fever.’ I just couldn’t live on an island any longer.
All around me, I saw people who were taught by their parents, as I was, to just toe the line, not ruffle the feathers, not rock the boat too much and just put your head down, do your work and that’s it. And I think that as a community, we’re reaching the limitations of that kind of thinking.
I would definitely say the Oakland Raiders are the punk rock band of football.
Classic rock, psychedelic rock – I like to dig up old music and see what I can get influenced by.
The attractive thing about rock climbing: There are no rules.
It's a terrible thing to go through life thinking that

It’s a terrible thing to go through life thinking that you have a rock on your side when you haven‘t.
Maria Callas
I was about 17 or 18 years old, and Chris Rock’s ‘Bring the Pain’ came out, and I was obsessed. You know, it just hit on everything that was going on at that time and was such an in-the-moment special, and he knocked it out of the park.
Crime fiction is the new rock n’ roll.
Ken Bruen
Find a way and make it happen: I’ve always been the type of person who couldn’t rest until I found a way to make something happen. If I couldn’t go around the rock, I’d find a way to go over it or under it or through it.
I figure it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy; if I make a successful arena rock record, I’ll wind up playing arenas! I wouldn’t mind being back in that kind of venue because of the kinds of things you can do with production. You can make your shows more interesting, which would be fun to do.
Looking back on the production of ‘Nevermind,’ I’m embarrassed by it now. It’s closer to a Motley Crue record than it is a punk rock record.
I have a couple of basses in my office. And I try to be courteous of my co-workers, but sometimes I get carried away and I crank up my amp and I rock out. It’s kind of my stress reliever.
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.
Rock isn’t art, it’s the way ordinary people talk.
Billy Idol
I didn’t know how to deal with success. If there was a Rock Star 101, I would have liked to take it. It might have helped me.
We’ve gone further on this album, where we have a Big Band song, kind of a Sinatra-type song; we have a couple songs that have electronic music on them. We’ve got a couple rock songs, maybe a little heavier than what we’ve done. So the title ‘Jekyll & Hyde’ really covers the breadth of the record.
‘Remember the Time’ and ‘You Rock My World’ from Michael Jackson were two of my favorite songs ever. My mom used to bump them all the time.
Rock is all about writing your own script; it’s all about pioneering.
I’m sickened by all religions. Religion has divided people. I don’t think there’s any difference between the pope wearing a large hat and parading around with a smoking purse and an African painting his face white and praying to a rock.
I think the true rock fans are pretty loyal.
Bubba Sparxxx
At 17, I wanted to be a rock star.
I get to remind myself and other people to be yourself, to rock you who you are, and don’t worry about if it fits.
When Van Halen started out, there was no path to fame. We just played what we liked. Even today it always comes down to the simplicity of rock and roll.
I’m not going to be the rock star of the far right and frankly on the rock star of the far left.
Tom Barrett
I think the ’60s was a great time for music, especially for rock and roll. It was the era of The Beatles, of The Stones, and then later on The Who and Zeppelin. But at one point in the ’70s, it just kind of became… mellow.
The patron saint of outlining – the bespectacled siren who sings to me from his spotless rock – is P. G. Wodehouse.
It’s definitely an influence, I mean how can you not say you are influenced to play rock.
Mike Lowry
I think the world is ready for some rock ‘n’ roll. Some real time guys that play their own instruments, write their own songs, and sing the music and have a good time doing it.
Vince Neil
Detroit: Cars and rock ‘n’ roll. Not a bad combo.
I was madly in love with Elvis Presley. Dad wasn’t into it at all, at least not for himself as a performer. He used to say, ‘Mr. Cole does not rock n’ roll.’
You play a ‘lowdown dirty shame slow and lonesome, my mama dead, my papa across the sea I ain’t dead but I’m just supposed to be’ blues. You can take that same blues, make it uptempo, a shuffle blues, that’s what rock n’ roll did with it. So blues ain’t going nowhere. Ain’t goin’ nowhere.
You know, I always root for the older athlete. I root for the second album. I root for solo careers after the rock star breaks the band apart.
Over the holidays, and even during filming, I realized that I actually like my body, even if it’s not perfect according to the book. I just feel sexy. For the first time, I don’t want to get rid of the curves. I just want to tone it up. My body is comfortable, and it’s not unhealthy, so I’m going to rock with it.
I’ve seen inside fans’ houses, and they would have pictures of Jesus on the wall, and next to it would be a picture of The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express. That’s no lie.
Rock on out.
Janis Joplin
The most influential thing was the two Chris Rock specials that came out when I was in high school. I was obsessed with that stuff.
Here we are, we're alone in the universe, there's no Go

Here we are, we’re alone in the universe, there’s no God, it just seems that it all began by something as simple as sunlight striking on a piece of rock. And here we are. We’ve only got ourselves. Somehow, we’ve just got to make a go of it. We’ve only ourselves.
John Osborne
I try to be respectful about getting an honor or recognition, but I don’t really know what the Rock Hall actually is. In my experience with the people who run it, I don’t see it having to do with anything other than them making money.
This is the rock ‘n’ roll life, and you had to invent it as you went along. There was no textbook to say how you operate this machinery.
I’ll rock with anyone – vintage rappers, young dudes, anyone.
Some of us can be examples about going ahead and growing, and some of us, unfortunately, don’t make it there, and end up being examples because they had to die. I hit rock bottom, but thank God my bottom wasn’t death.
I didn’t want to be told what to do. I don’t want to water down my music to fit into their formats. I know what rock and roll is to me, but everything’s turning into one big commercial.
Our country has often stood like a solid rock in the face of common danger, and there is a deep underlying unity which runs like a golden thread through all our seeming diversity.
It’s only rock and roll, my god! It’s not rocket science.
I’m not dissatisfied with my place in it rock ‘n’ roll.
When attempting to make a plea for more peace in the world at a rock concert, we are reflecting the feelings of all those we have come in contact with so we may all have a better understanding of each other.
I’m a rock star because I couldn’t be a soccer star.
Rock ‘n’ roll music is what gets me off.
‘The Beatles’ did whatever they wanted. They were a collection of influences adapted to songs they wanted to write. George Harrison was instrumental in bringing in Indian music. Paul McCartney was a huge Little Richard fan. John Lennon was into minimalist aggressive rock.
I love heavy metal, Metallica. I’m into Jefferson Starship and acid rock.
Plus, I very much like the feeling of height, and buildings have even more of a feeling of height than rock faces.
Alain Robert
Dance music cannot compete with a really great rock n’ roll song. There ain’t no DJ that’s gonna play something that can take ‘Mr Brightside’ or ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger.’
I think country music is Lynyrd Skynyrd. I think a lot of the country music is what we do, but I don’t think rock & roll is dead at all.
As a New Yorker you can’t help but be proud of the fact that so much music and culture started here. Punk rock, jazz, hip-hop and house music started here, George Gershwin debuted ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ here; the Velvet Underground are from New York.
It’s like people call me a rock star or this or that. And I go, ‘Don’t call me that. I don’t think of myself in those terms. If you have to call me anything, call me a chameleon.
Meat Loaf
Everyone talks about rock these days; the problem is they forget about the roll.
I do like classical music, and soft rock, and jazz, which I never listened to when I was 15. Now I like it. The older you get, the more tolerant you get, right?
They’ll see it. And it doesn’t matter if they don’t. It’s only Rock ‘n’ Roll. But I do intend to move more into the Mainstream. Marilyn Manson is just the First phase.
I mean, there’s times to rock and roll, and I love that too. But I think my first love is acoustic music.
We just dig Southern rock ‘n’ roll. It hasn’t been represented well at all. So, we want to see the people in the South get their music out.
Ronnie Van Zant
I grew up listening to a lot of emo music, a lot of rock music, a lot of rap music, a lot of trap music, funk, everything.
We all had to dodge the idea we were spokespeople for our races. Like, ‘Hey, it’s the Mexican Guy! The Filipino! The Chick!’ We’ve always stood up to it and said, ‘Fine, bring it on and we’ll show you how we rock.’
I’m an old rock and roll buff. I love Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty.
Nick Carter
Well, I think we’re the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world.
Joey Ramone
I remember Mitch Miller saying every week, This rock and roll stuff will never last. But one doesn’t like to bring that up to Mitch.
Rosemary Clooney
I remember doing the sex scene in Red Rock West. I had to kiss Nic Cage and then look like I was going down on him. And he couldn’t do anything – he just had to lie there.
Rock and roll came into my life when I was about 12, 13, when Little Richard and Chuck Berry had just started hitting the shores of England.
I get asked a lot about the Rock N' Sock Connection.

I get asked a lot about the Rock N’ Sock Connection.
The only rock I know that stays steady, the only institution I know that works, is the family.
Rock ‘n Roll: The most brutal, ugly, desperate, vicious form of expression it has been my misfortune to hear.
There is a fundamental situation in which the country has reached rock bottom, that a mother can’t send her children out of the house in the morning. The country has reached rock bottom and this needs to be changed.
A live performance is the same no matter what genre it is. Wrestling, rock ‘n roll, hosting, acting – it’s the same thing.
The marketing department is really an important part of getting an animated film to work. If the people running it are used to selling live action films and the hard rock music and the sex and all those things… Anything outside that, they just don’t know what to do with it.
When people say Jerry Lee Lewis invented rock n’ roll, they forget Little Richard. People talk about Elvis Presley and forget he was singing black music. I don’t blame Elvis. It was the music business figuring it could make more money from this music if it weren’t presented from the original source.
Rock and roll is a contact sport. I enjoy playing the tunes that really get the people going.
Some people admire the aspirational rock star figures whose biopics make it to TV, the people they watched as kids and made them want to play football for England. For some comics, it is often the Doug Stanhopes and the Joan Rivers.
My mom passed away a day before high school started, and her dream was for me to be a full rock and roll guy, and play drums in a band.
Man, I’m the No. 1 living and breathing rock star. I am Axl Rose; I am Jim Morrison; I am Jimi Hendrix.
I love all of my colleagues here at The Federalist, but everyone knows that David Harsanyi is my favorite. I will be forever grateful for the guidance and support he gave me when we started this enterprise. He is a rock. His work is consistent, productive, done to a high standard. He is supportive of his colleagues.
When you’re young, it’s really easy to lose your perspective, which I did, really losing sight of who I was. I started believing I was who everybody thought I was, which was a crazy rock star. You know, ‘Life’s Been Good,’ that story.
I came up from growing up with a lot of Catholic guilt, a lot of punk rock, hipster guilt in the later years where I think people have thrown a lot of things on me. Where I always felt like I’m not supposed to tell the horn section what to play or I don’t want to come off egotistical.
When I lost seven of my toes on Nanga Parbat and small parts of my fingertips I knew I’d never be a great rock climber. So I specialized in high-altitude climbing.
I grew up mostly with classical, big band, and a lot of Irish music – I really didn’t start listening to rock and roll until I was maybe sixteen.
When people talk about the ’60s I never think that was me there. It was me and I was in it, but I was never enamoured with all that. It’s supposed to be sex and drugs and rock and roll and I’m not really like that. I’ve never really seen the Rolling Stones as anything.
We’re all humans living on this tiny little rock, floating through space at, like, thousands of miles an hour. We should all just get along.
When we started making electronic music I imagined that the reaction we got from the rock musicians must have been similar to the one the beat groups got from people like my dad.
Trevor Horn
Every time we rock our babies in the night, we bring order back to a disordered world. Every time we look down at our children and cry, we make the world one shade brighter. That’s what children do to us – and for us.
Satan has declared war on motherhood. He knows that those who rock the cradle can rock his earthly empire. And he knows that without righteous mothers loving and leading the next generation, the Kingdom of God will fail.
I mean, if you go to a rock gig and someone plays a ballad it can still really come across, even though there’s a hundred thousand people there.
My existence is about making movies, so I’ve just got to rock and roll with the punches. You want to make movies on telephones, I’m there.
When I’m back home, all I wear is African fabric. All I really rock is the traditional stuff.
WizKid
I’m a big rock star, I got a beautiful girl, and they still call me a fag. Its’ like high school never ends – the jocks are always on top.
You can find old Jewish newspapers from Detroit that have my promotional ad in them. It was a totally insane time in my life. Paul Rudd was also a bar mitzvah emcee, you know? It was like being a local rock star in Detroit.
When I was a kid, I used to make skateboarding videos, and I would pretend to be in a band and make rock videos that I’d edit with two VCRs.
Nnutthowze was a group I was in back when I wa,s like, 18, 19 maybe. It was DJ Icy Rock, my deceased friend Brian Dennis, the mastermind behind it, and a host of other cats.
People called rock & roll ‘African music.’ They called it ‘voodoo music.’ They said that it would drive the kids insane. They said that it was just a flash in the pan – the same thing that they always used to say about hip-hop.
People perceive punk rock in the sense of Sid Vicious, all strung-out, crazy and insane.
Style has always been very important to us. We grew up in the ’70s. Music was glam rock, punk rock and a very stylish movement.
Nick Rhodes
Jazz, rock and roll, movies and comics are the culture

Jazz, rock and roll, movies and comics are the culture of America.
Bill Griffith
I’ve done archery for about six weeks, and rock climbing, tree climbing – and combat, running and vaulting. But also yoga and things like that, to stay catlike!
So we got there at 6 a.m. We’d be shooting by 6:45. We wouldn’t break for lunch, we’d just pass food around all day. And we would just rock and roll ’til 4, then Matty Libatique, our great cinematographer, would say, ‘Outta light, guys’ – and that was it.
Joel Schumacher
I think Freddie Mercury is probably the best of all time in terms of a rock voice. There was a vulnerability to it, his technical ability was amazing, and so much of his personality would come out through his voice. I’m not even a guy to buy Queen records, really, and I still think he’s one of the best.
I started out dabbling in rock and roll; then I did playback, and I have also sung for my own songs on screen.
Times were changing. Clothes were changing. Morals were changing. We went from romantic loves songs like I used to do to rock ‘n roll. Now that has changed to rap. So, there’s always a new generation with new music.
We were poor. My mother got our clothes out of the free box at the church, you know? So much of when you’re a kid is about relating about what you watch on TV. And who’s got these cooler shoes, and ‘Let’s trade lunches.’ And I was just like, ‘I don’t have a television. I have a rock and a piece of tofu.’
Mitt Romney – he had a Rock Hudson thing going, shoeblack hair and a well-hung resume, but even for a shameless, position-shifting phony he seemed a trifle insincere.
Tame Impala’s music revisits a time when guitar effects and studio tricks were music’s newest frontiers; when rock was barely old enough to drive and violently threw conventional ideas out the window.
When rock came along the lyrics and melodies became less important and it bothered me to think that perhaps they might not regain the value they have to music – they are music.
Dinah Shore
I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
The important thing is to build up my cardiovascular system, so I have the stamina to do stunts. To me, stepping over the line, taking a chance and succeeding is the ultimate freedom, be it in rock and roll or when executing a really challenging routine.
Wendy O. Williams
If we can figure out how to give more Americans a shot in tech, a shot at the ordinary jobs that don’t necessarily afford rock star status or come with generous stock options but that can sustain middle-class life, then we might just take a step toward stitching our nation back together.
I like to rock and roll, but I’m a mushy guy, too. I want to be the guy that all the girls love and all the guys want to hang out with.
Ideologically, the pursuit of science is not that different from the ideology that goes into punk rock. The idea of challenging authority is consistent with what I have been taught as a scientist.
We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.
I see friends who are in different genres of music, and they say they’re so burnt playing the same stuff every night. That’s why you see a country act wanting to go out and play an old classic rock song. But what cracks me up is that they all want to be Jimmy Buffett. I can’t figure that out.
My first manager was Gordon Mills, who I’d met right at the beginning. We shared a flat in London and traveled with rock bands doing one-nighters. Later, he became a songwriter and manager whose stable was Tom Jones, Gilbert O’Sullivan, and myself.
‘Hot Fuss‘ was all based on fantasy. The English influences, the makeup – they were what I imagined rock was. I’m a dreamer, you know? So I dug into that dream and made ‘Hot Fuss.’ But hearing people call us ‘the best British band from America’ made me wonder about my family and who I was.
Anthemic rock music is inherently fascist – anything intended to move huge masses of people is politically offensive to me.
Donald Fagen
I got tired of the Ramones around the time I quit and I really got into rap. I thought it was the new punk rock. LL Cool J was my biggest idol.
Dee Dee Ramone
I spent time at my grandfather Dino’s gourmet store where he brought in chefs from Naples to cook. I thought of them as rock stars.
What I think is cool about Fender, and what originally drew me to them, was the Fender electric guitar headstock, which I’ve never seen on another ukulele. I feel like a rock star when I’m tuning it.
I pick up the New York Times or Time and it’s talking about the latest rock group, which I’m sure is exciting to some people, but it neglects a huge area of music.
George Crumb
I mean, like, rock n’ roll was always about spirit and fun.
Joey Ramone
We got skate parks in different states, but me skating? Nah, I’m too gangster; I can’t rock with it. But I watch it.
Birdman
I grew up listening to blues and rock n’ roll and other music, but, legitimately, the Stones is one of my favorite bands in the world.
If you’ve lost focus, just sit down and be still. Take the idea and rock it to and fro. Keep some of it and throw some away, and it will renew itself. You need do no more.
‘The Queen Is Dead’ is not merely the Smiths’ best album, but it is one of those timeless, perfect, inexhaustible artifacts that could only have been made by a gang of sullen, sun-deprived rock & roll boys fighting off adulthood tooth and nail.
We’ve got great fans that rock and roll won’t have, because you can have a one-hit record and country music used to, not so much anymore and you have a fan forever.
Even rock stars are entitled to privacy.
Michael Novak
I'm like a snake sleeping on a rock. I won't bother you

I’m like a snake sleeping on a rock. I won’t bother you unless you poke a stick at me.
Ricky Nelson… I couldn’t believe it when he died. He was a great rock star.
Dee Dee Ramone
Music was in the air when I was growing up. My siblings Katy, Dave and Phil were musical; my dad worked in inner-city New York where a musical revolution was taking place – folk music, rock n’ roll, gospel music. My sister taught me to sing. My brothers taught me to play.
Sam Barry
I acted three times with Fred MacMurray, three times with Martin and Lewis, four times with Rock Hudson. Three times with Glenn Ford.
Dorothy Malone
I just want to be an inspiration. I’m a rock star, I’m Future Hendrix.
Future
I have Nineties music oozing out of my pores. What made rock & roll back then is that it was uncensored. It was raw and dark. Think of ‘Something in the Way,’ by Nirvana – he was telling everyone how he felt.
I really don’t have a theme when I start a sculpture. The rock guides me to the final sculpture. I think that is true for many creative sculpture artists.
Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god, but a great rock, and the sun a hot rock.
Anaxagoras
When you hear bosses talk about their best salespeople, they often refer to them as rock stars. It’s the highest praise your boss can give someone on your team.
I wasn’t personally that familiar with the Classic Rock bands. That is where Jorn Viggo came in: he played me tons of that stuff – Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, plus a lot of bands with cool songs, riffs, vocals, etc. We really listened to tons of music.
When we did concerts, we wanted them to be theatrical events – collaborations with designers, choreographers, and directors – because we thought traditional rock concerts were boring.
‘She’s Dynamite’ was a 100 years ago, and I recorded that song because the company thought that it was a great song and it was hot. That was the beginning of rock n’ roll, and I guess they thought it would be a BB King version of rock n’ roll.
I was roundly criticized for being in and around rock & roll music at its inception. It was the devil’s music: it would make your teeth fall out and your hair turn blue, whatever the hell. You get through that.
You can’t buy being a rock star.
My mother has done so much for me in my life and has continuously been there and been my rock.
J. R. Martinez
I think it had something to do with my love of music, especially rock music.
Sports is like rock ‘n’ roll. Both are dominant cultural forces, both speak an international language, and both are all about emotions.
The reason kids like rock ‘n roll is their parents don’t.
Mitch Miller
It’s such a lonely existence, living with a rock n’ roller. No matter how much he loves you, he will always love his music more.
Anita Pallenberg
I listen to a lot of Pink Floyd, the Doors, Elton John, Sabbath, Metallica, GN’R, Megadeth – just classic rock, classic metal stuff.
Rap actually comes out of punk rock, not black music.
You need to turn over every rock and open every door to learn your industry. This process never ends.
Rock and roll is not an instrument. Rock and roll isn’t even a style of music. Rock and roll is a spirit that’s been going since the blues, jazz, bebop, soul, R&B, heavy metal, punk rock and, yes, hip-hop.
MC Ren
When I was a teenager, I went to Europe on a backpacking trip by myself, and I met a woman who was following Sebadoh. It was the early 1990s, and that was my introduction to indie rock.
I’ve come to find out everybody loves ol’ David Allan Coe, even people like Kid Rock.
I don’t think punk ever really dies, because punk rock attitude can never die.
Billy Idol
What I’m trying to do, in my own small way, is trying to bring African and Afro-Cuban rhythms into rock.
Jack Bruce
In the process of looking for comedy, you have to be deeply honest. And in doing that, you’ll find out here‘s the other side. You’ll be looking under the rock occasionally for the laughter.
Rock is so much fun. That’s what it’s all about – filling up the chest cavities and empty kneecaps and elbows.
I had done a lot of rock ‘n’ roll photography when I was in college. I was one of many photographers who worked for The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and all of these rock ‘n’ roll bands.
John Dykstra
For a while we were chasing a book by Graham Greene to do Brighton Rock as a musical. We didn’t get the rights, so we decided to create something from scratch, with Jonathan. By that time we were big fans of his work.
The friendship we share grows amidst the craggy rock po

The friendship we share grows amidst the craggy rock pond; reeds of water spray fireflies scented with bonfires.
Bradley Chicho
I was a fan of the group. I thought they were great – loved The Eagles – but I thought that their beautiful harmonies would sound amazing with some rock guitar behind them.
I’m fascinated by the narrative of geology, and I’m a veritable pack rat of a collector on the road. I keep a rock hammer in my car.
Marianne Wiggins
Rock ‘n’ roll offered me a platform to speak what I felt. It also offered me a platform to support my mama and my brothers and sisters – twelve children.
I have to admit I’ve found myself doing the same things that a lot of other rock stars do or are forced to do. Which is not being able to respond to mail, not being able to keep up on current music, and I’m pretty much locked away a lot. The outside world is pretty foreign to me.
It’s good to have a lot of once-in-a-lifetimes in your lifetime. If you get the chance to skydive, go skydiving. If you’re offered a part in a weird Shakespeare play in San Diego, slap on some tights and rock out some iambic pentameter.
The ’60s are gone, dope will never be as cheap, sex never as free, and the rock and roll never as great.
Abbie Hoffman
To me, rock and roll is like an ethos or a state of mind.
There is a difference between a convert who is built on the rock of Christ through the Book of Mormon and stays hold of that iron rod, and one who is not.
Blues is a big part of rock and roll. The best rock and roll got its birth in the blues. You hear it in Little Richard and Chuck Berry.
We’re not the kind of people to just take a break and say everything’s going good, you know, let’s rest on our laurels, act like rock stars – we take it very seriously, and we certainly aren’t just celebrating and doing a victory lap.
I think that Stevie Nicks is one of the greats. Steve Nicks and Grace Slick and Janis Joplin have the real rock voices, to me.
Rock and roll is not just music, it is a way of life, it has its own spirit.
The blues is the foundation, and it’s got to carry the top. The other part of the scene, the rock ‘n’ roll and the jazz, are the walls of the blues.
Luther Allison
Music was segregated in the ’80s, and then in the ’90s the boundaries started to break down, and rock kids got into electronic music. But then you got this reverse snobbery where people would only listen to electronic music and not rock.
When I was 5, I started taking singing lessons, and then, after ‘School of Rock,’ I started taking guitar lessons. I would always write songs and play them for my friends, and I would play my guitar on the set a lot.
If you don’t own the stage, you shouldn’t be in rock n’ roll.
I’ve never taken vocal lessons. My early trumpet training and a fortunate talent for singing has always been enough for me. In the case of rock singing, I’ve always felt it was better to remain a bit untrained to maintain your individuality.
You can’t have rock and roll without drugs, you can’t have rock and roll without sex.
Rick James
Once the subject matter of rock n’ roll changed from cars and pop love songs to songs about really true love and the blues and death and mortality, this light bulb went off in my head and I went, ‘Oh, that’s what they’re doing. That’s kind of – that’s art.’
That’s what drew me to rock music in the first place – that sense of remaking the world on your own terms.
Stephan Jenkins
Wherever there are rock ‘n’ rollers, we’ll play. That’s what we’ve been doing for more than 30 years – rock ‘n’ roll. It’s made me everything from an honorary mayor to honorary member of a motorcycle gang.
Ronnie Hawkins
I played, like, a year of piano until I learned the ‘Pink Panther‘ theme. That was my goal. Once I was good enough, I quit. Now my music has to have some rock.
Rock n’ roll was one thing, and then they chopped off the ‘roll’ and called it ‘rock,’ which became a sort of umbrella term for anything with a guitar in it. Like hair bands. How could we possibly believe that? It’s just gotten downright silly, to the point where now it’s sort of become like professional wrestling.
Rock became an incredible commercial success, people just became bored with serious music, and it was forgotten.
Henry Flynt
The best rock musicians are the most exciting people in the world.
Many rock musicians are excellent cooks, I’ve found, and those that are prefer to eat their own cooking in the studio. I encourage this behavior as I also enjoy the benefits of fresh food.
If you call yourself a singer, then you must have the ability to sing anything, whether it’s pop, classical, rock, sufi, or folk.
When I was a very young kid, the first music that really turned me on was a new wave of British heavy metal – big, dumb rock music. There was a band called Diamond Head – they were basically the band that inspired Metallica. But I also liked bands like Saxon and Iron Maiden.
As a rock star, I have two instincts, I want to have fun, and I want to change the world. I have a chance to do both.
I wanted to play this part: the goofy rock and roller who can’t hang up his guitar when it’s clear to everyone else that he should.
I don't always feel fierce and fearless, but I do feel

I don’t always feel fierce and fearless, but I do feel like I’m a rock star at being human.
After 9/11, we realized that all these silly culture wars, and arguing about rock lyrics… who cares? You know, we, for some reason, remembered what our real problems are.
People who got on their feet and freaked about were called idiot dancers. and nobody wants to be called an idiot dancer. But the whole idea of rock and roll is to get people off their arses – that’s what it’s about.
Steve Marriott
I was this Catholic kid, and I never really lost that. I loved the rituals of Catholicism. The mass is a magic ritual; it’s a transubstantiation, and the stations of the cross – I mean, a crown of thorns? Getting whipped? It’s punk rock.
Jim Carroll
They wouldn’t play my records on American radio because I had spiky hair. They said, ‘Punk rock doesn’t sell advertising, it won’t make any money.’
Billy Idol
There’s a lot of people over time who have brought out all these funky records that everybody has started jumping on like a catch phrase… When Planet Rock came out, then you had all of the electro funk records.
The only way to be punk rock in L.A. is to be a Republican.
Rock stars love Cuban heels because a lot of them tend to be diminutive. And I’ve never met a man who doesn’t mind having an extra inch or two anywhere on his body.
Punk rock seemed to make sense. I was listening to The Clash and I really loved their social messages and they have a great history of fighting racism.
Justin Sane
I was always brought up to have a cup of tea at halfway up a rock face.
People will come at me telling me to wear this or wear that. If I don’t like it, I don’t like it. They couldn’t pay me to wear it. If it’s something I can rock with, I’ll rock it. I’m more interested in being completely authentic to me. In my opinion, being myself is making a statement.
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.
People like to compare something to something that they know. Even with Chris Rock, they say he’s like Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy.
Buddy Holly and the early rock ‘n’ roll was no lighter than the way I play. It’s very minimal.
We’re a rock n’ roll band. We play heavy metal music. And we want to give you a great time. That’s basically how it all boils down.
It would be great to see somebody like Kid Rock kissing a man. But I’m sure that he wouldn’t like the prospect of it put to him, and I won’t even go there with Eminem.
The Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock?
I was in a vintage pub rock band called Clover in the 1970s.
Huey Lewis
Even though we’re not the most punk rock band, the way we’ve done things is pretty punk rock. Just kinda say it with a big middle finger to the record labels and do it ourselves.
Brandon Thomas
Punk is musical freedom. It’s saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster’s terms, ‘nirvana‘ means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that’s pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.
Oh, happy day when the enemies of ascendancy have got to confess that people of color rock.
We were the first generation of rock & roll, but life goes on.
Rock n’ roll can get quite overwhelming. You can get caught up in the cycle.
Rock was born in the South, so saying ‘Southern rock’ is like saying ‘rock rock.’
Duane Allman
Teenagers did not have, before rock ‘n’ roll and rhythm-and-blues – they did not have any type of music they could call their own once they got over 4 or 5 years old until they were well into their 20’s and considered adults.
Sam Phillips
I’m not so rock and roll. I’m more techno.
I would describe my look as ‘ladylike rock chick.’
I think EDM and metal and rock have been together already for a long time. Bands like Nine Inch Nails, Linkin Park, the Prodigy – they all have influences from both.
Rock gives children, on a silver platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry, everything their parents always used to tell them they had to wait for until they grew up and would understand later.
I think rock records tend to be very expensive.
There’s no half-singing in the shower, you’re either a rock star or an opera diva.
Just find what works for you, what style suits you best

Just find what works for you, what style suits you best, and just be confident enough to rock it.
We grew up listening to alternative music from the ’90s, and there was no shame in being on a major label and still making the music you wanted to make. I feel like rap rock came around and drew a line in the sand, and everybody that was like me ran away from that and started making indie-rock.
People don’t realize it, but no one lives that rock and roll life 24-7. They think it’s hundreds of bottles of champagne flowing and private jets and money. But there’s a lot of time when you’re traveling – time to think, time to be lonely. Sometimes it gets to you.
That’s the great thing with the WWE. They want you to be like John Cena, they want you to be like The Rock, and they definitely give you that platform.
I don’t really have a favorite genre. I could listen to a rock song, a metal song, jazz, pop music, whatever. For me, whatever style it is, it always depends on the chord progression, the lyrics, and the melody used.
Bakermat
Maybe if they all could he combined – art, rock and fashion. Those were always my favorite things.
Stephen Sprouse
My mom was a rock ‘n’ roll mom.
The truth is, I initially became a singer-songwriter while still in my teens because it was the only way to guarantee that somebody on earth would sing the songs I was writing. Since then, I’ve performed just about everywhere: rock clubs, concerts halls, arenas, TV.
Rupert Holmes
When I was young, I wanted to do something more low-key, like become a drummer in a rock band.
It is easy for me to go play a rock show, I have been doing that all my life and I love that.
I like ‘The Usual Suspects‘. Great film. I also like ‘Scarface’, films like that. Lots of gangster films. I really like watching all kinds of films, dramas, romance. I’ll watch comedies. I like Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Denzel Washington, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle. I’d like to meet them.
Barkhad Abdi
It’s funny, when bands or younger musicians ask me: ‘So, what does it take to make it?’ Well, first explain to me what you mean by ‘making it’: Do you want to be a rock star or do you want music to be your livelihood?
I think there’s this primal need to go to a show when you’re a rock fan. And it’s about that camaraderie and about that intangible feeling that we all get.
Rock and Roll has certainly tried to take its toll on me. I’d rather not talk about my past excesses here, although some hardcore rockers might argue that those excesses were responsible for some great records, but I know which side I came out on.
Our responsibility is to rally and lead the whole party and the Chinese people of all ethnic groups, take up this historic baton and continue working hard for the great renewal of the Chinese nation, so that we will stand rock firm in the family of nations and make fresh and greater contribution to mankind.
Maybe if they start playing new rock bands videos, then maybe but there is no point in a guy like me spending 250 grand for a video that no one is ever going to see.
I’ve always been spiritual but I’ve never had a proper context, and it took me awhile to find the proper context. It’s hard to realize you can have any kind of relationship with God you want… and so I now have a punk rock relationship with God.
If you ever see The Rock working out in the gym, don’t think you can just go up and disturb his workout and expect him to take a picture. He’s there to work, so kindly just pass the silverback on by or he’ll rip your face off.
’30 Rock’ is probably one of my favorite shows. It’s just joke after joke after joke.
There’s nothing you can really do to prepare to rock. Do you prepare to eat a delicious meal? Are you hungry? Then you’re gonna eat it.
For some young people, their first experience ever hearing punk rock music was playing the Green Bay Packers on ‘Madden‘.
My father, he was like the rock, the guy you went to with every problem.
A lot of punk rock is not going to be in the mainstream. It’s below the radar. The beauty of it is that you’re not supposed to always know. It’s subterranean.
With technology and social media and citizen journalism, every rock that used to go unturned is now being flipped, lit and put on TV.
I have such an eclectic taste in music. Come to a backyard BBQ at my house, and I will run the gamut from Skynyrd to Sinatra to ’90s grunge, rap, R&B, and classic rock. I have issues. If I had to pick one, I love this country artist named Craig Morgan. His music and his songs are so relatable and tell such vivid stories.
Mike Vogel
To me, the 90’s signaled the end of glam rock, the beginning of gangsta rap, and hopefully the beginning and end of boy bands.
Shane West
Rock bottom for some people is death. Some people never learn from their mistakes. They don’t learn from other people’s mistakes.
Because you have things like ‘American Idol’ and you’ve got radio stations that play music made entirely by computers, it’s easy to forget there are bands with actual people playing actual instruments that rock.
I take cabs if I need to get somewhere or I take car service. I don’t drive, I wouldn’t mind riding a bike… People think that because you become an entertainer you gotta have this rock star thug image. I’m an artist, man. I’m going to live like an artist.
I saw an Elvis Presley movie Jailhouse Rock, where he gets out of jail and makes his own records and takes them to the radio stations himself. And then, he puts records in the store. After seeing that, I made records an put them in stores.
If I had more confidence, I would rock a crop top.
We didn't go for music that sounded like blues, or jazz

We didn’t go for music that sounded like blues, or jazz, or rock, or Led Zeppelin, or Rolling Stones. We didn’t want to be like any of the other bands.
Michael Giles
Washington and Lincoln mean as much to us as any two men could mean to a civilization, a people, and age, but I told Mr. Coolidge when he dedicated this monument that this rock is being carved with a monument that will outlive our government.
I played Big Band jazz music. I wasn’t into rock and roll. I was just there because it was a living. I surprised everyone. I’m still surprising people.
I think every film actor secretly wants to be a rock star as well; just that part of the job which requires the extrovert in you. Even if you’ve become an actor because it’s your way of hiding in plain sight, there’s still part of you which has that craving.
I wanted to have the adoration of John Lennon but have the anonymity of Ringo Starr. I didn’t want to be a frontman. I just wanted to be back there and still be a rock and roll star at the same time.
If you don’t know the blues… there’s no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music.
I hate the rock music tradition. I can’t bear it!
Any time you play your horn, it helps you. If you get down, you can help yourself even in a rock ‘n’ roll band.
Rock and roll was a revelation for me.
I’m about as privileged as you can get. I’m a white, male, heterosexual front man of a rock band.
I think God is the most unexplored territory in rock and roll music.
Look! Don’t be deceived by appearances – men and things are not what they seem. All who are not on the rock are in the sea!
William Booth
I do live like a rock star, but it’s not as great as it sounds. It’s a lot of traveling.
I’m severely overrated. I’m just above a hack. That should be the name of my new DVD: ‘Chris Rock: Slightly Above Hack’.
In every decade rock and roll starts to get very serious and navel gazing and kind of self serious and every once and a while it kind of needs a kick in the pants.
My parents are actually very famous singers in Bulgaria. My dad was in a rock band, and my mom was in a pop group. They met, fell in love, and actually formed a group together to escape the country because it was Communist, and they couldn’t leave. They didn’t know any English but eventually found their way to America.
I’d really like having a couple days of being a rock star, although I’d rather be a backup – like maybe the drummer for Muse… It would also be fun to be gorgeous, like be Charlize Theron, just for a couple of days.
I spent the night on a sliver of rock high up on the east face of Long’s Peak, climbing with Tom Frost, and slept at the icy feet of the Dru, listening to the lightning crack above me and the thunder roll down. I only did it to write about it. I would never go up on the Grotto Wall for fun.
Part of me feels it’s better we’re not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
I never, ever saw myself as glam because I didn’t wear makeup… my image is a plain leather jumpsuit, which is not glam at all. I’ve always seen myself as rock n’ roll and not glam.
I have never felt in tune with the whole rock industry.