Greil Marcus Quotes

Punk rock should mean freedom, liking and excepting anything that you like. Playing whatever you want. As sloppy as you want. As long as it's good and it has passion.

Punk rock isn't something you grow out of Punk rock is an attitude, and the essence of that attitude is 'give us some truth'

Punk rock seemed to make sense. I was listening to The Clash and I really loved their social messages and they have a great history of fighting racism.

I don't think punk ever really dies, because punk rock attitude can never die.

When I was fifteen, I used to run around reading 'Adbusters' and dumpster diving, trying to find ways to make the U.S. government unwind into chaos through hardcore punk and metal.

Punk is not really a style of music. It was more like a state of mind.

Rock'n'roll is not red carpets and MySpace friends, rock'n'roll is dangerous and should piss people off

No matter what Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious do, they can't be more disgusting than The Rolling Stones are in an orgy of biting.

I'm like a Sid Vicious for a new generation.

When you break it all down, my punk rock is my dad's blues. It's music from the underground, and it's real, and it's written for the downtrodden in uncertain times.

Punk was originally about creating new, important, energetic music that would hopefully threaten the status quo and the stupidity of the 1970s.

Punk was sort of an angry stance against things that had happened just before, against the pop of glam rock, against progressive rock. Music had become very staid and it was about the playing and people obsessed. Eric Clapton was God and we needed an enema within the art form, and punk did do that.

There are a lot of bands who claim to be punk and they only play the music, they have no clue what it's all about. It's a lifestyle. It's not about popularity and all that crap.

My entire life, socially, was all around the Maggie era. That was the great challenge as a Sex Pistol was how to deal with Margaret Thatcher. I think we did rather good.

Country music is completely punk-rock. It's the original punk-rock.

I always said punk was an attitude. It was never about having a Mohican haircut or wearing a ripped T-shirt. It was all about destruction, and the creative potential within that.

When you're thirteen and listening to punk, the aggressive nature of music can sway you to the dark side.

I've always said, I thought the Sex Pistols was more Music Hall than anything else - because I think that really, more truths are said in humour than any other form.

The ideology of Miller's 'lost boys' is an incandescent mix derived from PlayStation violence, Iraq news footage, Peter Pan, William Burroughs's 'Wild Boys,' and anti-G8 millenarianism.

There is something familial about punk. There is something positive. Even though some punk is destructive, nihilistic, explosive.

I think, fundamentally, the core of everything I do is punk rock.

We need punk now; we need it more than ever. We need rebellion by youth.

N.W.A had something in common with the Rolling Stones and MC5 and groups like that: the voice of rebellion. It's rebellion against your parents. It's rebellion against the system. It's rebellion against society.

Punk rock is just another word for freedom.

I was about 16 when punk started to happen. It was so exciting. You had a social depression going on in the U.K. There was a sanitation strike. London was really grim, gray. You had Margaret Thatcher coming in. It was a really revolutionary time.