Lee Ranaldo Quotes

Well, you know, back then there wasn't many albums, it was the singles. You sold singles.

Even the bands I dig don't have a history of attaining mass consumption.

I like bands that don't necessarily sell the most records.

Bands like - even Kiss to a degree - bands like Kiss and Motley, Ratt, Poison, Bon Jovi - I just think the days of those bands going out and selling ten or twelve, fifteen million records like they used to do back in the day, it's not happening.

People don't really buy records anymore, so record companies won't invest in bands like us. They want cookie-cutter acts.

If they [Guns N' Roses] didn't get back together soon they would have missed their window and no one would have cared in 3 or 4 years.

Once you get to 22 or 23, you're already old school. It's the bubblegum ones that buy records, have fun, party. You get older, you get sophisticated, and you don't go buy no records too much.

Mick Jagger's fans bought records with their allowances. Sinatra's people bought them out of wages.

The media, being what it is, is always looking for the next new thing. There are still bands out there playing, no matter what the new thing is. The Stones go out there, and people go see them without records or even airplay.

I grew up in an era where the record companies just sold records to everybody, and the whole family bought songs. Today, record companies are failing because they are putting their accent just on the young, and I think that's rather silly.

My father would make record after record, and he'd be so surprised at what would sell and what wouldn't.

When I started playing music, people weren't selling 5 million records. That was not the standard; that was not the focus.

We don't go around the world counting ticket and record sales, nor do we glue our ears to the radio to hear what's trendy at the moment - we're not that type of band.

The whole music world is based on the young, the very young people.

I didn't hate Nirvana. That was more of a media-constructed this-versus-that thing.

Bands like R.E.M. and even The Replacements, during that initial wave of college rock, would sell 40, 50, 100,000 copies of a record, and that would be seen as extremely successful - and definitely enough to keep doing more.

No one listens to CDs anymore. Who even owns a CD? I used to bring my CDs to shows, and it was, like, a guarantee that everyone would buy one. Nope! Not anymore.

It's just dumb: how you can have the number 1 record in Los Angeles and not have the number 1 record in New York? It's crazy.

'Course, 'Santini' bombed in England, y'know. It came out at the height of the New Wave, which couldn't have been a worse time for a solo singer trying to sell rock melodies.

Selling a million records used to be a big deal. I guess it's not anymore.

My mom has every issue of 'Billboard' I've ever been in.

I think records are irrelevant, but I'm being approached about it all the time. If I could avoid it, that would be great.

The way consumers interact with music is different now. It's not an albums business anymore; it's a singles business again, and the industry has gone through that before.

People who buy my records don't go into music stores - music stores which are fading before our very eyes.

What Nirvana's success means is that certain radio stations now have their ear more cocked to bands like us; they're more open to playing more stuff.