Greil Marcus Quotes

Late 20th century music was a really important thing. It changed the world, and I'm part of that, and now I'm part of the museum that celebrates that.

Everybody can dig The Beatles, but why should everybody dig us?

People need to put my music in a perspective where they use other established artists from the past, and almost all the names I see related to my music are great musicians.

David Lee Roth had the idea that if you covered a successful song, you were half way home. C'mon - Van Halen doing 'Dancing in the Streets'? It was stupid. I started feeling like I would rather bomb playing my own songs than be successful playing someone else's music.

I think the most exciting thing is that you expect people our age to know the music, but actually a lot of kids know the music, and if anything is left, we have left really good music, and that's the important part, not the mop-tops or whatever.

There's not a hip-hop artist that didn't snatch of piece of Bob Marley. It's totally impossible.

Isaac Hayes told me once, 'There's no such thing as old-school. Either you went to school or you didn't.'

I started putting down my own pen and spending some time searching for the best songs out there possible. It doesn't matter if I wrote them or not.

I don't care where the Cure is placed in the pantheon of rock. I don't care if we're perceived as relevant. We're never worried how we fit in. I don't even want to fit in.

More people seem to know the Van der Graaf Generator material than my solo work - thanks, I suppose, to their parents' lingering vinyl collections.

It's so cool to hear these DJs and younger artists that are coming around be like, 'Wow, we love your music.'

I look at John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters, guys who had a fantastic longevity, and I learned something from them. They didn't try to sell records. They weren't saying, 'Ok, what can I write, what can I do in the studio that will sell?' They were just doing their thing, and people picked up on it. I like the idea of that.

I loved Lauryn Hill; I loved the Fugees.

If it hadn't been for record people like Ralph Peer, the Chess brothers, and Alan Lomax, then life would've been unbelievably dull, and I would've been sacking groceries somewhere and probably, at this point, running a little 7-Eleven down by the airport.

You've got a lot of Tupac clones, but I don't think I'm one of them. I just think I give people a little piece of the feeling he gave them.

No albums are better or worse than each other, and they're all important to our legacy and our story.

I'm always honored to see my music and New Orleans Bounce make its way into mainstream culture.

Rock & roll has kept us alive for all these years. But we just love country music. It's in our blood.

Taylor Swift - I don't ever hear anything of hers where I'm like, 'Oh, so-and-so could've cut that.'

My dad is actually an amazing guitarist, and he always had an incredible record collection, which is how I discovered things like Jimi Hendrix and Santana. I'll always be grateful for that.

You need to put yourself in the way of the music that stood the test of time. You're doing yourself an incredible disservice not be interested in the width and breadth of it.

My family wasn't in the music business, but they loved music.

Honestly, I still don't know a lot of artists, and I want to keep it that way for a while. I think that's why I might be quite original.

The thing about Shaggy's records are those records are very timeless.

That's why I don't necessarily enjoy it when bands cover other songs. You'll never recreate what has been done, especially if it's something that's legendary and classic.