Rock And Roll Quotes

“If Music is a Place -- then Jazz is the City, Folk is the Wilderness, Rock is the Road, Classical is a Temple.”
― Vera Nazarian

“Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock 'n' roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

“I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour, but heaven knows I'm miserable now.”
― Morrissey

“Girls have got balls. They're just a little higher up, that's all.”
― Joan Jett

“Why would you want to be anything else if you're Mick Jagger?”
― Keith Richards, Life

“There's something beautifully friendly and elevating about a bunch of guys playing music together. This wonderful little world that is unassailable. It's really teamwork, one guy supporting the others, and it's all for one purpose, and there's no flies in the ointment, for a while. And nobody conducting, it's all up to you. It's really jazz__that's the big secret. Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.”
― Keith Richards, Life

“Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade...”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation. We feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle, finance, and vapid technical complexity. We would call forth in our minds the image of Paul Revere, riding through the American night, petitioning the people to wake up, to take up arms. We too would take up arms, the arms of our generation, the electric guitar and the microphone.”
― Patti Smith, Just Kids

“Shall I tell you what rock and roll is, Johnno, from someone who doesn't perform, but observes?
It's restless and rude. It's defiant and daring. It's a fist shaken at age. It's a voice that often screams out questions because the answers are always changing. The very young play it because they're searching for some way to express their anger or joy, their confusion and their dreams. Once in a while, and only once in a while, someone comes along who truly understands, who has the gift to transfer all those needs and emotions into music.”
― Nora Roberts, Public Secrets

“Some don’t even watch art with their eyes nor with their mind, but with their ears, ever since they judge art by the sound of money. (
“Money rocking and rolling”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“From this moment on I'd dedicate my life to rock and roll and take as many drugs as possible. What could possibly go wrong?”
― Craig Ferguson, American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot

“We imagined ourselves as the Sons of Liberty with a mission to preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary spirit of rock and roll. We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation. We feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle, finance, and vapid technical complexity.”
― Patti Smith, Just Kids

“Jazz presumes that it would be nice if the four of us--simpatico dudes that we are--while playing this complicated song together, might somehow be free and autonomous as well. Tragically, this never quite works out. At best, we can only be free one or two at a time--while the other dudes hold onto the wire. Which is not to say that no one has tried to dispense with wires. Many have, and sometimes it works--but it doesn't feel like jazz when it does. The music simply drifts away into the stratosphere of formal dialectic, beyond our social concerns.

Rock-and-roll, on the other hand, presumes that the four of us--as damaged and anti-social as we are--might possibly get it to-fucking-gether, man, and play this simple song. And play it right, okay? Just this once, in tune and on the beat. But we can't. The song's too simple, and we're too complicated and too excited. We try like hell, but the guitars distort, the intonation bends, and the beat just moves, imperceptibly, against our formal expectations, whetehr we want it to or not. Just because we're breathing, man. Thus, in the process of trying to play this very simple song together, we create this hurricane of noise, this infinitely complicated, fractal filigree of delicate distinctions.

And you can thank the wanking eighties, if you wish, and digital sequencers, too, for proving to everyone that technologically "perfect" rock--like "free" jazz--sucks rockets. Because order sucks. I mean, look at the Stones. Keith Richards is always on top of the beat, and Bill Wyman, until he quit, was always behind it, because Richards is leading the band and Charlie Watts is listening to him and Wyman is listening to Watts. So the beat is sliding on those tiny neural lapses, not so you can tell, of course, but so you can feel it in your stomach. And the intonation is wavering, too, with the pulse in the finger on the amplified string. This is the delicacy of rock-and-roll, the bodily rhetoric of tiny increments, necessary imperfections, and contingent community. And it has its virtues, because jazz only works if we're trying to be free and are, in fact, together. Rock-and-roll works because we're all a bunch of flakes. That's something you can depend on, and a good thing too, because in the twentieth century, that's all there is: jazz and rock-and-roll. The rest is term papers and advertising.”
― Dave Hickey, Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy

“You can take and nail two sticks together like they've never been nailed together before and some fool will buy it.”
― George Carlin, Watch My Language

“As soon as you start talking about mystique, you have none.”
― Neil Young

“If you don't like it, Eat me.”
― Rae Murphy, Reconsider Me: My Life And Times With Warren Zevon

“Jane reminds us that God is in his heaven, the monarch on his throne and the pelvis firmly beneath the ribcage. Apparently rock and roll liberated the pelvis and it hasn't been the same since.”
― Emma Thompson, The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film

“He recovered quickly, reaching out to touch a few outstretched hands, melting the front row of girls like one long stick of butter as he moved closer toward me.”
― Emme Rollins, Dear Rockstar

“If I've got a Dad, and his name is Wormwood Rot, and he's in some heavy metal rock band called Grave Dirt . . . then I'm definitely meeting him!
She stares at me awkwardly, and I'm about to ask again—maybe even insist—when she says, "Honey, why do you think he's on the news? Wormwood, I mean . . . your father? Becca, he's . . . dead.”
― Rusty Fischer, Becca Bloom and the Drumsticks of Doom: A Heavy Metal Love Story

“The guitar breathed. It inhaled and exhaled, and music filled the shop as the instrument picked the heartbreak of generations.”
― Brenda Sutton Rose

“The guitar poured out its soul, its history, its dreams, its pain, its victories, its secrets. The guitar’s strings purred with blues and ended with a haunting solitary song with no lyrics.”
― Brenda Sutton Rose

“The nose can’t help catchin’ what the ears get sick with. Yessir, rock bands just sweat evil. Evil’s been around for a long time, ever since rocks started getting real hot and making a lot of noise as they exploded out o’ the ground and evil spirits wisped out of hell. If a band ever uses a fog machine, hold your breath so you don’t become possessed by one.”
― M.C. Humphreys

“Time collapsed into a delicate dark pencil brushed against our
eyebrows, the emergent rumble of crowds gathering above our heads. We
slid into our costumes. Pirate, outlaw, futuristic rebels. Red,
purple, gold. Chains hanging from our belts, tight black trousers. We
were moved upstairs, closer to the stage. Finally, we heard the
cannon's roar: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome... Tanzar
recording artists... THE MASTER PLANETS!" The world shot forward. We
stepped into the spotlight.”
― Donald Gallinger

“Nothing the Rolling Stones ever did was more important than the respect they showed to the music that had inspired them.”
― Stephen Davis, Old Gods Almost Dead: The 40-year Odyssey of the "Rolling Stones"

“I just got tired of fighting. I made a decision. That was the fire. I found out that I was pregnant and she's the rain.”
― Randolph Randy Camp, ...Then The Rain

“One day maybe you'll get a chance to meet her.”
― Randolph Randy Camp, ...Then The Rain

“As police officers, we’re ready to put our lives on the line to save the lives of others. We may joke and kid around with each other, sometimes, but when the shit hits the fan, it’s time to rock and roll. You don’t think about dying. The adrenaline takes over and you react. Seldom do you have time to think about what you are doing. Instead, you think about staying alive, at all costs, even if it means breaking the rules. Deep down, you know you need to survive, just to avoid putting your family and friends through that hell.”
― Jason Medina, The Manhattanville Incident: An Undead Novel

“Murry Wilson, to be sure, was a driving force in the Beach Boys' early success, but his greed and vindictiveness deny him any tribute. The most forgiving thing I can say about him is that he was simply an inheritor of his own father's cruelty. My mom, for her part, was always loyal to her brother, as she was grateful for how Murry had protected his siblings against the violence of their father. I wasn't going to sully my mom's devotion to that brother with an explanation of his betrayals against his own family.”
― James S. Hirsch, Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy

“Nothing was going to compromise my freedom to walk the streets whenever, wherever and with whomever I wanted. I saw fame as being akin to living in a high-security prison and I didn’t want to go there. How can you win just enough and then leave the table? Go to a Gamblers Anonymous meeting and you’ll see it’s easier said than done. I’d have to be very careful to not let things get out of control. I resolutely avoided looking at charts, bank balances, reviews, radio or television appearances, and carried on like nothing out of the ordinary had happened.”
― Chrissie Hynde, Reckless: My Life as a Pretender

“After writing a song, there’s first a feeling of elation followed by the sinking feeling that it will never happen again, and you go back to thinking that you can't do it. It creates an ongoing feeling of inadequacy.”
― Chrissie Hynde, Reckless: My Life as a Pretender