The thing I find frustrating about rock music is, how different can you make an acoustic drum kit sound, an electric guitar and vocals?
The Righteous Brothers got so heavy because of the dramatic hit records like 'Lovin' Feelin.' Bobby and I just felt like we were a couple of Orange County guys who were just having a great time singing rock n' roll, and then, boy, it became something else.
I was raised on gospel. I remember hip-hop and rock music were secular, so basically, for my first ten years living in Detroit, I was on gospel. But when I moved to Houston, that's when I got to open up my musical horizons.
Iggy Pop is a pure Michigan product - gritty, smart, but not afraid of looking stupid or foolish. His father was once a high school English teacher. I love Iggy as a physical entity, sinewy, twisty - even in old age - an embodiment of rock and roll history.
In the 1970s, we had Carl Sagan, and he was so suave with his turtleneck and his tweed jacket. And he was, you know, he made science look cool. And in punk rock, we haven't had that. We haven't had the Carl Sagan of punk.
I would dream. I focused all my attention on going to America. The subculture, James Dean, the rock n' roll, the beat writers.
I think you sometimes have to go hit rock bottom before you can grow and rebuild as a person.
I've never seen myself as a pop singer. I grew up listening to gospel, soul and rock. My approach to pop is that, when I was doing my album, I wanted to have raw, genuine lyrics, but wanted it to be easy to process.
Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat.
In the early '70s, I started to feel like Philadelphia soul was the black-sheep brother of rock and roll. I decided to try to get away from it.
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.
I've seen guys on the street who look the part of a rock star just as much as any rock star. If you feel it and you believe it, then you can get away with it. Rock on!
I play 'Rock Band' with my friends' kids, and they completely beat me senseless with it. I feel like I'm holding them back. I try to play the drums, and I just can't play the drums. I think I need to work on my skills.
From dancing around to Michael Jackson and Madonna as a kid to having my mind blown by the first sounds of punk and indie rock, to getting to play my own songs and have people listen, music is what got me through.
People who love R&B will love my music, people who love rock will love my music. It's soulful, it's pop. It's a sound that relates to everyone.
In my creative life, David Bowie is definitely an enormous influence on me, being one of rock's greatest shapeshifters.
When I try to relax, it's more Swedish rock, softer music, and I go out and do fun stuff. I play guitar, but it doesn't matter really what it is - just something that keeps you away from hockey.
The Beatles and Ray Charles were in the same charts together, and that was just called pop music - it wasn't called soul or rock. The best pop music just stands out as something that's just original, and I think it should all be called pop again.
I loved everything that went with rock n' roll. I loved being at the heart of such creativity and being young in such a stimulating and exciting era.
I grew up in Arkansas, and I went to Little Rock Central High, which was the site of a desegregation crisis in '57. I graduated in '97.
In England, rock music very rarely infiltrates the charts, but country music even less so.
I loved being a rock and roll star, but it wasn't what I wanted in life.
Presumptuously, I speak for all Who fans when I say being a fan of the Who has incalculably enriched my life. What disturbs me about the Who is the way they smashed through every door of rock & roll, leaving rubble and not much else for the rest of us to lay claim to.
I worked with Dionne Warwick, did shows with Bette Midler, and then I did the 25th anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Springsteen at the Garden. It was all important stuff because you want people to know you can work, you can sing, and you can still look good!
I would love it if 'Community' could have a trajectory like '30 Rock' and choose when to go out.
This is just the way it goes: there's always a cycle with music - it goes up and it goes down, it goes risque and it goes back, it goes loud then it goes soft, then it goes rock and it goes pop.
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.
Your grandfather is and will always be your hero, your inspiration. He fought in World War II, came home to Little Rock, Arkansas, and worked for 50 years as a mailman in the segregated south. Not once did he get a job promotion in five decades. But he kept working all the same.
Sometimes '30 Rock' was a struggle because I'd be doing the show and still be doing stand-up full-time.
If Nirvana had remained a small, underground punk rock band, Kurt Cobain would still be alive. And he'd probably be living in Seattle, getting kind of fat and balding, be relatively happy and producing records for other people.
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.
I'm a huge stadium rock fan, but I'm also a fan of everything from Massive Attack to Peter Gabriel, U2, the Police, Radiohead, and Coldplay.
There are three things on my piano - my Best Villainess award, my Grammy, and my Rock N' Roll Hall Of Fame statue.
For a long time, when I was very young, I went to go see arena rock bands. I was 16, and it was all I could get in to see, legally. And I saw Led Zeppelin and Ted Nugent and Van Halen and all that.
Growing up in Oakland, we did things like white t-shirt, blue jeans and Nikes. That was my get down, how I was going to rock. And if you look at me right now, I'm pretty much black tee, blue jeans and some sneakers.
I lost my innocence with Johnny Cash. I used to watch the 'Johnny Cash Show' on television in Wangaratta when I was about 9 or 10 years old. At that stage I had really no idea about rock n' roll. I watched him, and from that point I saw that music could be an evil thing - a beautiful, evil thing.
