Quotes About Rock

Van Halen was a huge influence on me, and 'Eruption' was the song that really leaped off that first Van Halen album.

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.

Few bands in hard rock history have been so adept at balancing the awesome and trivial as Van Halen in their prime.

You can never deny the immense talent, rock credibility and iconic historical contribution that Van Halen made.

Greg Ginn was certainly a huge influence on my guitar playing. I put him up there with people like Eddie Van Halen. Eddie Van Halen changed everything; I don't necessarily like everything he did, but he definitely changed everything.

If you really stop to think about it, the last really big guitar hero was Eddie Van Halen, and that was back in the '80s - early '80s, you know what I mean? That's a long time ago.

I was in a party band in the early '80s, and we played Sabbath and Ozzy songs as well as Rush and Van Halen... all that kinds of stuff.

Nothing's changed from when I'm seven years old to now. Nothing's changed at all. I like the same stuff that I did - Kiss, Van Halen, 'Happy Days,' 'Laverne & Shirley,' 'The Brady Bunch,' monsters and all that stuff.

Just about every rock band and every guitar player from 1964 to 1984. To me, that's the golden period of rock. From the first Beatles album hitting America to the last Van Halen album with David Lee Roth. That's where all my favorite rock exists.

Punk was key to the early part of me playing guitar. I was really into melodic punk-rock. I related to punk more than Lynyrd Skynyrd or Yes or Van Halen.

My tastes are pretty varied. For instance, I love Wilco. But it's considered dad rock. It's one of my favorite bands, and yet I find it impossible not to think of myself as a dad-in-training when I listen to it.

I don't shape trends, I'd say. I merely reflect them. I think the emphasis is on 'them.' I like variety in poetry. I love how it comes in so many guises. As rock lyric, as rap, as note on a fridge.

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.

Elvis deserves a lot of credit for bringing the blues to middle America, not the Vegas stuff. The early stuff, The Sun records, and the first few RCA records. He was wonderful, he had the power, the drive, and he was so dedicated to his music.

I started out in this business in rock and roll bands and stumbled into drag. Drag just happened to be my vehicle for my creativity. So, you know, it's afforded me the opportunity to create new shows, to make music.

It's in the vein, somewhere in a cross between The Beatles, Cheap Trick, The Stones, Badfinger, you know, but it's not retro at all. But it is very pop.

I really like proto-metal, so stuff like Pentagram is really great, and that's more in the vein of Sabbath and stuff like that.

I played in Velvet Revolver, which is a raw, bombastic blues band with a punk rock edge to it. It's like everything is based around the blues, no matter what the groove is.

I think that expression is so great. So I'll look at someone like Prince, and one reason to lose weight is so I can rock that purple velvet outfit with the white frilly shirt.

When we came along in 1982, music was getting boring - like 1976 when punk hadn't happened. We wanted to be rock 'n' roll. We grew up with The Velvet Underground, the Stones and Mars bars and Marianne Faithfull and we knew we didn't want to be boring - and we weren't!

I was part of a metal and rock band, and I performed in front of 3000 to 4000 people for many years. I was the loudest mouth up there on stage. We would be screaming, head-banging and mass venting. We would all vent our feelings together, which is ideal as compared to participating in political and social forums, and I never felt any restrictions.

In the early part of the '60s I was influenced by the Ventures.

I've asked these guys in rock bands with all the 18-wheelers driving to the venue how they make money. I just don't understand it. But I don't understand a lot of things.

I'm not someone who gets to play The O2 and places like that, but that's the kind of rock and roll venue. The popularity of stand-up means that some people are getting to play rock star venues.