Patti Smith Quotes

If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music and of aviation.

Bob Dylan is my idol. Everybody has that person growing up that made them see things a little differently than they did before, Dylan is that guy for me. My dad gave me the 'Blonde on Blonde' album on cassette tape when I was seven or eight. It took me a while to get into Dylan's vibe, but once I did, I never looked back.

I did want to be Joni Mitchell for quite a long time.

Bowie's been a huge influence on me.

One of my biggest inspirations growing up was Whitney Houston, so I was devastated to hear about her passing. I'm from East Orange, New Jersey, and started singing at New Hope Baptist Church, so she was like my fellow Jersey girl.

I'm a big fan of Beyonce and Rihanna. I've listened to Beyonce all my life, and she's a big influence on me.

If it weren't for the Beatles, I would not be a musician.

Without David Bowie, popular music as we know it pretty much wouldn't exist.

I rage against Vincent van Gogh for needing to die at 37, after painting for only ten years.

When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire.

Geoffrey Tozer's death is a national tragedy. For the Australian arts and Australian music, losing Tozer is like Canada having lost Glenn Gould, or France, Ginette Neveu. It is a massive cultural loss. The kind of loss people felt when Germany lost Dresden.

Tupac is huge; he's an inspiration. Arguably, he's probably the biggest, most analyzed and loved artist of all time.

I think the first older artist I related to and loved was Bowie.

I listen to a lot of artists like Tori Amos, Cherry Glazerr, and Patti Smith, and I kind of wanted to follow in their footsteps, or at least try to be that genre-defining.

People who die in an untimely way who are artists, somehow that validates their art, we feel. Why culturally we feel that, I don't know.

Sometimes artists die young, and we don't know exactly why. I think that, in life, you have these special individuals, whether it's Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin or Kurt Cobain. They're on this journey - they're on this earth to change things, to make things incredible - and then they're not with us anymore.

I look up to people like Michael Jackson because he set up pop culture.

I want the biggest artist of 2030, 2027 or even 2025 to say, 'I was inspired by Cordae. Cordae is the reason I make music.'

The Beatles meant everything to me growing up, and John was part of that. I loved Lennon's persona. He knew who he was and he knew what he represented to a worldwide public... I think he incited and inspired a whole group of youth to speak out and say what they felt.

Elvis was the first person in music that I really identified with.

Like trillions of others, if it wasn't for Bob Dylan, it would have been a different musical landscape. Pop music wouldn't have been my thing at all. I did also grow up listening to The Beatles, but I never thought of being a Beatle.

I wish I would have known Kurt Cobain. I would have been the first guy there to get him help, doing anything I could have. I just felt like the people around him kind of let him down.

The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.

It's a good thing [James] Dean died when he did. If he'd lived, he'd never have been able to live up to the publicity.

The day Elvis passed away would be our national holiday, if the South would have won, we'd had it made.