Kurts biographer: My job as biographer was to tell the stories, not interpret them the way some psycho-biography does. Kurt also had a sadistic streak. It's hard for us now to accept that because those who were moved by his music want to identify with him but there were many parts of his character that showed him to be selfish, hurtful, and torn with rage.
Courtney: Kurt didn't have to die. He was systematically destroyed.
John Lydon: That's what went wrong with punk in the first place. They all jumped on the bandwagon, so to speak, and started getting into uniforms and codes and strict disciplines, which was anti-punk. It's not what you wear, it's what you do and what you are that counts. And sod all the rest of that baggage [contemptuously] It became fashion, didn't it? And clone punks. And to this day, they're still into that. You see on them on the King's Road in London. The same studded leather jackets and the mohawks, but it's all just a uniform. Join the fuckin army, if that's what you want.
Romantically speaking, those were the best times. But what wasn't good was something like our show at Brunel University, when Sid was out of his face on drugs. A lousy PA, no monitors, couldn't hear shit. Far too many people in that aircraft hangar. The whole thing became ugly.
Sid's problem was that he believed that New York myth - the glamour of heroin and the underground scene. But it was all fantasy. Sid was a romantic. And, as you know, romance always ends in grief.
Check out some of the Internet stuff too. It's hilarious. "Oh, the Pistols would be nothing without Sid. Everybody knows he wrote all the songs and sang em" Hee hee hee hee.
Henry David Thoreau: If a man doesn't keep pace with his companions, perhaps it's because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away [1854]
Albert Einstein: I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
John Lennon: For the last six years I have been a Beatle. It's been a jolly good life and we've had a good many laughs, but it can't go on forever.
Time magazine referred to Day Tripper being about a prostitute and Norweigan Wood being about a Lesbian.
Paul McCartney: Well we just want to write songs about prostitutes and lesbians! [1966]
James Dean Bradfield:
I like sex and rock'n'roll but I've never taken drugs.
I'm addicted to guitars, cigarettes, coca cola and whiskey.
Nicky Wire:
Apathy is the enemy. And society generally.
Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Sean Moore: Like The Clash said 'Complete Control'. It hasn't gone away. It's still there. The corporation has become more powerful than governments in the way it transcends borders and has a far more reaching influence on the way the world is run.
Joe Strummer: The truth is that corporations buy governments. That's the point of attack - to admit what's really going on and bring that stuff out in the open. I'd like to see an Exxon candidate for Twickenham East. That would reflect what's really going on.
Sean Moore: It's incredibly worrying. Naively, when we started, we thought that by being within the corporation we could change it from the inside. As time has gone by we've tried to be a little bit more subversive and intellectual about it, and it seems like we're becoming more and more isolated because very few bands still have those ideals. And those that did have them have since gone. Just thinking about Rage Against the Machine and how they were turned completely on their heads to such an extent that Zack De La Rocha spins around and says 'That's it. The band is over.
Joe Strummer: It's the same with Public Enemy and Rage Against The Machine. Having a conscience while still being tethered to the machine. I can recognise the same situations that we went through - that you realise you're f-d, that everything you're saying is a lie [laughs] I saw that Zach de la Rocha left Rage Against The Machine a few months ago. I'm guessing he reached the same conundrum that I reached 20 years earlier. When Rock The Casbah was a hit in America, I saw I was becoming a professional rebel. We were becoming a joke. We'd been sincere when we were struggling, but when we hit that new plateau I thought, This has gotta stop.
Nicky Wire: We must have a chance to bear witness to our reality and to allow others the chance to paint it/act it/feel it/sing it/be it.
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