Kurt Vile Quotes

The first music I ever got into was the '80s alternative bands that my brother listened to, like The Cure and The Smiths and R.E.M. and Fugazi. I can remember specifically saying The Cure was my favorite band back in second grade.

I was born in '76, but I didn't get into rock until the early '90s when the grunge stuff started coming out.

My dad would play 'The Blue Album' a lot, the first Weezer album, and that influenced my alternative indie thing and that's kind of how I found tons and most of my favorite bands.

The last time I really got into new music that wasn't heavy metal was probably like... TV on the Radio? I think that was it. That's the last time.

I never really followed grunge.

The first real concert, other than going with my dad to see Three Dog Night, was Smashing Pumpkins and Garbage. I was fourteen or fifteen. I liked Shirley Manson because she reminded me of Annie Lennox. They both have these deep, sexy, powerful alto voices.

I absolutely think the Seattle grunge sound was instrumental to my music education.

I think it's really cool, but Jimmy Eat World and Gin Blossoms did it better than anyone. People don't realize just how awesome the Arizona history is, especially for alternative music. Growing up, that's all I ever wanted to be was those two bands.

Live are a really good band. I like Stone Temple Pilots, Radiohead I love. Even Oasis.

I was very aware of Jeff Buckley. My brother actually bought me The Mamas And The Papas and Jeff Buckley for my birthday when I was in my early teens.

We were perceived as a post-grunge band.

As I got older, I fell in love with Radiohead, and 'OK Computer' is one of my favorite albums of theirs. Sonically, the tone of the guitars on tracks like 'Electioneering' just rips right through me.

Pixies and Sonic Youth were so important to the eighties.

I've been listening to a new band called Wolf Alice, courtesy of my son. The vocalist, Ellie Rowsell, has a gorgeous voice.

That was a time when I did love music, I couldn't get enough of what was going on. Maybe it was Nirvana that brought me back. I guess it was a comfort because something that sounded so right - and non-commercial - had become so influential, so immediately.

The Flaming Lips have been on Warner Bros. forever, and certainly everything I heard growing up was on a major label in some way, from the Cure to Radiohead to Bjork.

It's just like music when you reckon it up. It's like listening to Pavement it's just The Fall in 1985, isn't it? They haven't got an original idea in their heads.

Guided By Voices was huge when I was 16. Then I got into the Beatles, then classical music, Beethoven.

I love James Taylor, Jeff Buckley, Elliott Smith and Nine Inch Nails.

I was just a kid in 1987 when I heard of the Pixies, the year after I graduated high school. But I had my band together, and my best friend at the time, Corey Hickock, who was the guitar player in the band that would become STP, Mighty Joe Young, turned me on to the Pixies.

I spent my teens in northern California listening to KALX, KUSF, and KFJC, finding people that changed my life.

Man, I loved The Smiths so much. I thought they looked awesome, and Morrissey had hearing aids like my Papaw.

In the early and mid 1990s, every musician I knew was obsessed with Helium. The 'Pirate Prude' EP and 'Pat's Trick' played on repeat at nearly every gathering I attended. And we didn't just listen to these records - we discussed them, the worlds they opened, novelistic and strange.

I remember all the magic markers of the first time I heard the Stone Roses and that Madchester vibe, the Verve and all these groups coming up.

PUP introduced me to so much more amazing music. They really shaped my sound.