“When Punk Rock happened, it created an opening in the culture… it made it ok to think you could play music, even though you had no musical training.”
Kim Gordon
“The musical differences are obvious: the Go-Go’s are more punk, while my solo work is more soft pop. But they’re equally as fun and enjoyable for me. I couldn’t possibly put one over the other.” Belinda Carlisle
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“I’d been thinking I’d have to learn how to play really well, but obviously the message of punk was that you just learn three chords in a week and you’re away.”Jarvis Cocker
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“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
“By the time I was 19, punk had occurred. It had a completely different cultural dynamic to it which rejected everything and started again from the year zero.” Billy Bragg
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“If a man can tell if he’s been successful in his life by having great friends, then I have been very successful.”
Johnny Ramone
“Punk’s influence on music, movies, art, design and fashion is no longer in doubt. It is used as the measurement for what is cool.” Malcolm McLaren
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“To me, I think of the ’70s as being this glorious decade where I discovered who I was and discovered all these amazing things… punk rock, electro music, fashion, all of that.” Boy George
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“What the Sex Pistols made sounded like quality, because they had a big label and top engineers and producers. But punk rock shouldn’t be quality; it should be fucking mania. It should be gnarled, a glorious lo-fi live sound.”
David Vanian
“Punk recognised the fact that the establishment had no room. There’s no point in saying you’ve got the establishment wrong because they hadn’t got the establishment wrong, they’d got it absolutely dead-on.” John Hurt
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“I am very grateful to punk because I was a girl, and I felt like if I got in a band, I’d be kind of a novelty act, but punk was all about non-discrimination. No one cared because it was punk, so, you know, anyone could do anything they wanted.”
Chrissie Hynde
“I do fear for the generations of people who came of age thinking that pop-punk is what punk is, and that all the rebellion you need is just to stick your tongue out in the mirror every once in a while.”Jello Biafra
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“We were at the dark end of the L.A. punk scene, and that scene was full-on and violent and aggressive and wild and intense.”Flea
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“”Who gives a shit whether a donkey fucked a rabbit and produced a kangaroo? At least it hops and you can dance to it.”.”
Joe Strummer
“I was the only punk rocker at my high school. And there were at least a handful of black kids who liked hip-hop. Both were kind of the new music of the day, and it was lonely being the only punk.”Rick Rubin
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“Punk was never about one particular clean-cut imagery… it’s about many, many individuals coming very loosely together.”
John Lydon
“Punk will never be dead to me. It’s my life. I can never just drop this lifestyle. It embodies me.” Billie Joe Armstrong
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“I dropped out of high school and I couldn’t go to college ’cause I wasn’t smart enough, so I’d resigned myself to loading trucks and playing punk rock on the weekends.”Dave Grohl
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“I am very grateful to punk because I was a girl, and I felt like if I got in a band, I’d be kind of a novelty act, but punk was all about non-discrimination. No one cared because it was punk, so, you know, anyone could do anything they wanted.”
Chrissie Hynde
“Punk was defined by an attitude rather than a musical style.”
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“To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful, freedom to be who you are. It’s freedom.”
Patti Smith
“I was a punk before it got its name. I had that hairstyle and purple lipstick.”Vivienne Westwood
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“When the punk thing came along and I heard my friends saying, I hate these people with the pins in their ears. I said, Thank God, something got their attention.” Neil Young
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“When punk came along, I found my generation’s music. I grew up listening to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd, ’cause that was what got played in the house. But when I first saw the Stranglers, I thought, ‘This is it.'”
Robert Smith
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