Quotes About Influence

People ask me 'Are you copying your dad?' It is in my blood. I have got royal blood coursing through my veins. I can't help myself doing what my father did.

It's very hard to grow up in the African American church and for music to not be in your veins. It's just part of the fabric of who we are as people, especially black musicians.

I love the Velvet Underground, bro.

I like their darkness but I also like the pop-side of the Velvet Underground.

My grandfather was a very strong personality. He certainly ruled his household with an iron fist, even though it was often gloved in velvet!

When we learned to play in bands, what we were covering was equal part the Velvet Underground and the Grateful Dead. That would defy the logic that somehow these things don't fit in the same musical well.

I heard the Velvet Underground and that changed things when I was like, 15.

I do a cover of a Velvet Underground song, and they were one of the most important bands, for me.

It's hard to imagine the whole punk movement without The Velvet Underground. I toured with them when they did their reunion tour, and no one sounds like that; they are a very unique-sounding band.

When I was very little, I was into Michael Jackson. At six or seven, it was Madonna, but she's not what she used to be. I've been into everything from Edith Piaf to Joe Strummer to the Velvet Underground to Suicide to A Tribe Called Quest to African music.

My favorite model of success is when people say, 'Nobody bought that first Velvet Underground album, but everyone who did started a band.'

What made Andy famous was the years I managed him. I created the Velvet Underground and told him not to worry about them because they would help his career. All those things I did created his fame.

I would be happy to produce groups, like John Cale - he was in the Velvet Underground, and then he went on to produce these bands.

I had three older sisters whose record collections I borrowed, so I was listening to The Velvet Underground as well as Bach and brass band music.

I like Velvet Underground, but I was never really hardcore into them. I like them, and I like Nico, but I won't front like I'm super knowledgeable. I just never got around to it.

At 18, I moved to L.A. with my heavy metal band Avant Garde, which was very much influenced by Metallica. At 19, I got a job at Tower Records, and everything started to change very quickly. I started listening to the Velvet Underground, Pixies, early Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and also earlier music like the Beatles.

If you asked me to sing a modern song, I wouldn't be able to - I can't easily slip into that groove. But if it were a song by Nico or The Velvet Underground, fine.

When I was 13, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground made more sense to me than anything else.

'You Talk' was originally a copy of a certain Velvet Underground song.

The Velvet Underground is probably the best band that's ever existed, assuredly the best American one.

Jean-Luc didn't like me to say any bad words in real life, and I would always do it on purpose, just for fun. And he would go crazy! Then he had Brigitte Bardot do just that in 'Contempt.' And in that film she also has this line - 'I want red velvet curtains, or nothing at all in the apartment' - which was something I would always say.

I belong to the middle class that grew up very influenced by the Catholic church. The people of the novel are from a more pagan and practical world in which the Christianity is just a veneer.

How can it possibly be that so many Americans are rallying to support Ocasio-Cortez, when all they need to do is look at Venezuela to see where she is leading them?

I was always following my brothers. If my brothers hadn't played, I never would have picked up a racket. Tennis isn't the most popular sport in Venezuela.