Billie Joe Armstrong Quotes

I love punk rock, The Clash, The Ramones, The Cramps. I love where it all came from, and music for my ears now, it has to have that same electricity, adrenaline and danger.

When punk began to be a genre, people were going to go out and try to mine it. Some of the better groups, like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, were very artificial.

I discovered the Clash, the Pistols, obviously the Ramones, Blondie.

I used to hang out with a bunch of old punk rockers when I was a little kid.

When punk came along, I found my generation's music. I grew up listening to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd, 'cause that was what got played in the house. But when I first saw the Stranglers, I thought, 'This is it.'

The first Decline I did was out of sheer love and appreciation for the music. In 1977, it was more about bands, because punk was a new form of music. It was groundbreaking and political.

I started listening to and playing other music in the '90s. It was after hearing other bands, like Bad Religion, cover Ramones songs that I started to like our songs again.

What irritates me are bands that pretend they've never heard of the Misfits or Danzig, but they've got the skeleton shirt.

I was actually late to the punk movement because I was too young.

I first got into punk music at 17, The Adverts, just from being a bored teenager.

I got into punk at 17 after discovering an all-girl band from Long Island on the Internet called The Devotchkas - four crazy-looking girls with fast, driving basslines and high-pitched gang vocals who shared the same dress sense as the punks I used to eye up curiously in Camden.

When I was running the Troubadour, there was this transition from the classic singer/songwriter Jackson Browne types to bands like Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, and Fear. Those are just some that come to mind. Oh, and Adam Ant! The Fear fans wanted to 'crush' the Ants. These guys hated each other.

I was the only real punk rock kid in my school, with, like, the plaid pants and the Rancid t-shirt.

I moved to Naples, Florida, and by 15 I was into punk: Green Day, Rancid, NOFX, Operation Ivy. Along with the classic punk bands, like the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Misfits, Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat - all those bands that you get into when you're first getting into punk.

I was into the Ramones, Bad Brains, all of that, when I was in high school.

I was really into punk when I was about 14.

The Ramones are an original rock and roll group of 1975, and their songs are brief, to the point, and every one a potential hit single.

I was a huge punker growing up.

I never thought of Green Day as a punk band. Just bubblegum, really.

I'm still secretly a bit of a punk. Love The Clash and a bit of the Pistols. I guess as I've got older I've chilled out a bit. But, my teenage angst is still stirring somewhere!

Were it not for the Clash, punk would have been just a sneer, a safety pin and a pair of bondage trousers.

There's a punk-rock attitude, clearly, to 'Hated.' There's even a punk-rock attitude to 'The Hangover,' I think. We start the movie with a Glenn Danzig song.

I never met Johnny Rotten, and I didn't want to meet Johnny Rotten.

I created Punk for this day and age. Do you see Britney walking around wearing ties and singing punk? Hell no. That's what I do. I'm like a Sid Vicious for a new generation.

All of the punk-rock bands of the era would come in and play, and my job on Punk Rock Night was that I would go into the slam pit, and... I was 24 or 25, and I'd slam dance in the pit.