Tiesto Quotes

My style is part of the music I like, the bands I see, the people I surround myself with, the places I go to.

At 18, I moved to L.A. with my heavy metal band Avant Garde, which was very much influenced by Metallica. At 19, I got a job at Tower Records, and everything started to change very quickly. I started listening to the Velvet Underground, Pixies, early Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and also earlier music like the Beatles.

I just change with the times. I really don't have a say in what's going on. Music was here before me.

When I was very little, I was into Michael Jackson. At six or seven, it was Madonna, but she's not what she used to be. I've been into everything from Edith Piaf to Joe Strummer to the Velvet Underground to Suicide to A Tribe Called Quest to African music.

I still love it. I love lots of other music, too, and always have, but punk's the soundtrack of my youth. I think you never escape the music you're listening to and seeing when you're seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old.

I'm a real music fan, so I listen to all kinds of music all the time. I listen to a lot of what my friends or people I know are listening to. I'm always checking out new 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 grew up listening to Jay-Z, and I think the first time I really became obsessed with learning and thinking about lyrics was when I started listening to rap; I was 11, 12, and started becoming aware of music beyond the familiar.

I actually spend very little time listening to any new music.

I listen to the Mars Volta and Fiona Apple every day. I feel if you do write music, you write what you listen to, and you couldn't possibly write in another genre. So those are the two that I usually use.

At any given time I'm listening to the Cory Branan, Leonna Naess, Eve 6, the King's Noyse, Sean Paul, Green Day, the BoDeans, Buddy Holly, Nowell Sing We Clear... the list goes on and on. But I rarely listen to music while I write. I start typing the lyrics.

My dad bought a Beatles tape when I was in fifth grade, and that was the first time I ever really - I mean I was into music, but that was the first time it really blew my mind. When I heard the 'Red Compilation,' which wasn't like a proper album, I thought, 'music was more than I had ever thought it was before.'

I grew up loving classic rock music - The Beatles, The Rolling Stones - and then one day I heard 'Baby One More Time' on the radio and I thought 'What is this?' I was eight and it changed my life.

I enjoy listening to contemporary rock on the college stations while I'm taking long walks, love gospel and soul music, am fascinated by hip-hop and rap as the new kind of urban 'beat' poetry and, come to think of it, find something interesting about just any kind of music.

Record covers helped me discover a lot of music that I wasn't aware of.

And obviously, when I started out, I had a little bit more curiosity than some, and went seeking out the original artists, or in some cases searching up country music.

It's like, what happened, I was always leading fashion, and then the grunge thing kind of came along. And because I've been so on top in the '80s you know, I, you know, what can I do? Suddenly go grunge?

It was only later on that I became more interested in older music.

I think I skipped a lot of music, like when I was 17 or 18. I didn't know about a lot of new bands because I was so immersed in older music.

When I was growing up listening to music, it was 2004, when The Starting Line and Finch and The Used were kind of my favorite bands.

You can enjoy many different types of music. I think that's something more Americans should think about.

There's so much excellent new music around that I can't afford to buy it all and I haven't the time to review as much as I'd like. I can't remember a better time to be a musician or to listen to music!

I wear jeans and a T-shirt sometimes. I just like clothes - since the first time I can remember, like age ten or eleven; I was just obsessed with music and clothes. Just like a lot of people in England from my generation.

Classic rock, psychedelic rock - I like to dig up old music and see what I can get influenced by.

I was raised on 'TRL' and listened to every genre that sounded good to me, from Sum 41 to Jay Z to Band of Horses to J. Dilla to Deathcab for Cutie to Pharrell.