Punk Band Quotes

#1. I thought [ as a kid], "Maybe I don't want to start a punk band necessarily. I just want to learn to be a great songwriter," and got really into trying to figure out how that could be possible.

Ezra Furman

#2. The two basic social identities were Normal and Greaser; although a few sophisticated girls wore peace signs, hippies didn't exist, and while a seminal punk band, Iggy and the Stooges, was playing in nearby Ann Arbor, punk didn't exist yet, either.

Mary Gaitskill

#3. I kind of remember a friend of mine saying, like, you guys should make a rap record. You know, because we were already making punk records. We were a punk band. And I kind of thought, that's crazy.

Adam Yauch

#4. I'm a bit multifaceted in the sense that I've got many more than one musical taste. If you think about it, I started out playing in a punk band and ended up doing electro-pop. That was more an accident than a plan.

Alison Moyet

#5. I think most people's record collections are more interesting than radio generally gives them credit for. You're likely to be as interested in the Grateful Dead as Palestrina. It pisses me off how compartmentalised music is. I used to be in a punk band, you know?

Charles Hazlewood

#6. I never thought of Green Day as a punk band. Just bubblegum, really.

John Lydon

#7. I was in a little punk band and we put out a few punk records that weren't very political, at all.

Billy Bragg

#8. I have a karaoke punk band called The Ungrateful Dead, but we don't exist yet.

Eric Andre

#9. I was just a music lover who wondered what it would sound like if Otis Redding strapped on a guitar and played in a punk band. That's it.

Benjamin Booker

#10. We really try not to spend too much time thinking about what we're supposed to be a punk band, or whatever. We do the exact same thing today that we been doing for years and years and years.

Mark Hoppus

#11. I started an all-girl punk band when I was 14, and I was the drummer, not the singer.

Bjork

#12. I tried to play bass in a punk band once, and it was an absolute disaster. I can't play anything. I don't know what it is.

Nate Ruess

#13. DEVO was like the punk band that non Punk America saw as Punk and so when people who were really into Punk rock would be walking around on the streets the jocks who learned about Punk through Devo would roll down their windows and yell at the Punks: 'HEY, DEVO!!'

Thurston Moore

#14. It's shit punk.[..] That doesn't mean I think punk is shit [...] it means that when someone plays unk ina shit-like manner, it's excruciating. So either find yourself yourself a good punk band or move on, Tom. Because it kills me to say this, but you're actually a tiny bit gifted.

Melina Marchetta

#15. I wanted to be in a punk band before I had even heard any punk music.

Kurt Cobain

#16. I was in a really crummy pop-punk band. I think we did a whole bunch of Blink-182 covers, and we were on the fringe of losers and jocks. So we invited all the cool kids to come watch us play in our bass player's brother's bedroom. And it was terrible, but everyone thought we were so cool.

Nate Ruess

#17. Being a sexual icon is sort of like being the front man for an Orange County punk band: As soon as you can explain why you're necessary, you're over.

Chuck Klosterman

#18. The last true punk band to get a major label contract was The Dickies.

Jello Biafra

#19. I mean, they're only the best punk band out there right now, named for the fucking apathy of a xenophobic fucking nation oblivious to the fucking terror its leaders wreak on the rest of the world because they're too busy worrying if their cat might be stuck up a tree or something.

Rachel Cohn

#20. I like the bad-boy types. Generally the guy I'm attracted to is the guy in the club with all the tattoos and nail polish. He's usually the lead singer in a punk band and plays guitar. But my serious boyfriends are relatively clean-cut, nice guys. So it's strange.

Megan Fox

#21. 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.

Scott Weiland

#22. The New York Dolls did not think of themselves as punk rock. There was no such term at the time. They were just another band in what was called the New York scene.

Todd Rundgren

#23. A lot of punk rock. I listen to various stuff just cuz my friends now listen to a lot of different bands. I listen to a lot of underground stuff like jungle music.

Cassie Steele

#24. I'm a huge Nirvana fan and I like seeing things that at first seem out of context, but actually they're one of the biggest bands in the world. I like to see pop culture, like punk or alternative culture, clash with some other type of culture.

Nick Zinner

#25. TALLAHASSEE LASSIE was a record I wrote with my mom. A number of other famous groups have also recorded it such as Led Zeppelin (I understand they are currently touring) and several other English bands and also some various "Punk Bands".

Freddy Cannon

#26. Wrestling is pretty DIY. I've been doing it for 12 years, completely on my own. It's like being in a band or running a zine - except that I get to kick people in the face.

CM Punk

#27. I've always gravitated naturally towards a little bit of a heavier thing, having been in punk bands and metal bands before I ever got into pop.

Lights

#28. At the time, in 1996, an electronic band signing with a major label was something new, at least in France. Daft Punk knew that this meant a marathon of promotion, TV appearances, etc. To protect themselves and to be discrete, they came up with the masks and, three years later, the robot helmets.

Pedro Winter

#29. From the beginning, there was so much pressure in the early San Francisco punk scene for everyone to be different than everyone else, to flaunt your intelligence and insights instead of every band sounding alike, like what plagues punk music in particular today.

Jello Biafra

#30. I listen to all kinds of bands. I like rock music, like, male rock bands. I'm more into that instead of female singers. I like Nirvana, Green Day, System Of A Down. I also like punk rock, and I love bands like Coldplay.

Avril Lavigne

#31. Too pop for punk, too 'old school' for the New Wave, Mumps were a '70s era New York rock band, out of time.

Lance Loud

#32. I'd always wanted to make a record with Jim Dickinson, and I'd known about his boys for years, ... He reminded me that when they were 13 or 14 years old they had a punk rock band and I'd called him and wanted to make a record with them then.

John Hiatt

#33. I formed a band when I was about 13, and we all listened to punk - or what we thought was punk!

Tim Gane

#34. 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

#35. Thank you for the music, Sleater-Kinney. This gang of three was the best American punk rock band ever. Ever.

Rob Sheffield

#36. I was still doing the punk thing, but also playing in some indie bands, I had a less crazy hairstyle.

Tony Palermo

#37. I've been making electronic music for twenty some odd years but, because I grew up playing in punk rock bands, when I started touring, I thought in order to be a viable touring musician I had to do it with a band. I would DJ or tour with a full rock band.

Moby

#38. We grew up with all the Fat Wreck Records and all the Epitaph bands, that era. We mixed it up together. We were never purists of being just pop or just pop-punk. We always wanted to blend everything that we love.

Chuck Comeau

#39. I'm in a band. I don't go to church every Sunday. I love punk rock music. Sometimes I use swear words a lot. I respect and admire gay men and women. I'm obsessed with horror films. I know what shame feels like. And guess what old man? Jesus is still my Savior.

Hayley Williams

#40. Certain punk bands were influential because I thought, If they can do that then I can .Hanging around those bands was how I started my first band - In Praise of Lemmings.

Boy George

#41. Our band had perfected the art of punk-rock camping, throwing a bunch of crap into the van with, like, an hour's notice and just driving out into the mountains, where we'd drink beer, burn food, jam on our instruments around the campfire, and sack out under the open sky.

Gayle Forman

#42. 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.

Dean Wareham

#43. The Ruts were a great punk rock band from England whose songs were as excellent as their time together was short.

Henry Rollins

#44. Marriage is a long conversation, someone once said, and maybe so is a rock band's life. A few minutes later, both were done.

Kim Gordon

#45. My mom was in a punk rock band called The Trash Women, and they toured and all of that. She had me when she was 17.

Kreayshawn

#46. Growing up in a band is weird - you get stuck hanging on to what it is you think you are. But what I took into Depeche was that punk ethic, that you don't have to be accomplished to be a musician. If you've got ideas, you can do this.

Dave Gahan

#47. I was in lots of dodgy bands growing up and I always fancied myself in a band. But, you know, I was rubbish at writing music. So maybe one day I'll play a rock star, or punk rocker.

Gemma Arterton

#48. When I was very young, I played in a punk-rock band, but I also studied music theory and classical music.

Moby

#49. Standing out like a punk guitarist in a mariachi band.

Brandon Sanderson

#50. I would definitely say the Oakland Raiders are the punk rock band of football.

Billie Joe Armstrong

#51. I listened to classic rock and roll, and punk rock. 'Goon Squad' provides a pretty accurate playlist of my teenage years, though it leaves out 'The Who,' which was my absolute favorite band.

Jennifer Egan

#52. I certainly didn't want to be in a punk rock band, because I had already been in a punk rock band. I wanted to be in a band that could do anything - like Led Zeppelin.

Jeff Ament

#53. Jay Z in many ways is a rock artist. In the sense that they've used hard rock, punk rock, psychedelic rock aesthetics and influences in their music. When you see Kanye West, he has a full band playing. Jay Z has a full band playing with Marshalls.

Ian Astbury

#54. I started making music with my band in the '80s, so I am more product of post punk than classical music, and I have always carried on this way.

Yann Tiersen

#55. I started playing guitar at, like, 12 or 13 and just rock bands mostly. I had a punk rock band and hard core bands and all that.

Oscar Isaac

#56. 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.

Moby