Jared Leto Quotes

I was supposed to go see Led Zeppelin when I was in, like, the 8th or 9th grade, and then John Bonham died and I never was able to. For me, music is such a huge part of my life, and I use songs like memory triggers. So a lot of my memories of being a kid and growing up are associated with different songs.

I grew up listening to classic rock - the Kinks, Genesis, The Who, Pink Floyd.

When I get 13 or 14 years old, I get crazy with rock music, like, like, deeply crazy. And one of my favorite bands at that moment was, for example, like - bands like Metallica or Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd and Santana, you know? And then I start to play metal, actually, when I was - at the age of 15.

When I was very young, it was Guns N' Roses and Metallica. I'd play air guitar on my bed. They've been the thread throughout my life.

I wanted to be a composer before anything else. And my sister was listening to Led Zeppelin in the other room! When I heard that, it was a game-changer.

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.

There are some seminal things that happened in the '70s for me: Billy Joel and Jackson 5.

My father gave me one of those small, box-sized travel players when I was a kid and just a handful of records that he had. 'Zeppelin IV' was one. 'The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl,' which is just about the worst record ever - you can't hear anything, just screaming in the background. I think there was maybe, like, an Animals record.

My first albums as a little kid were Elton John's 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,' Simon and Garfunkel's 'Greatest Hits' - and 'Workingman's Dead.' How many other people still listen to the music they liked at age 12?

There's so many influential albums my parents would put on. Like the first album I ever heard was 'Help!' by the Beatles and from there I just loved rock music.

I've been to two stadium gigs in my life. One was James Brown and the other was Pink Floyd. They both sounded the same. I couldn't tell the difference between James Brown and Pink Floyd. I've never liked stadiums.

I grew up listening to everything. And rock and roll has always been a big, big part of it - as big a part of what I do as any other type of music.

I met Arcade Fire on their first record, 'Funeral.' I loved that record, and it was a record I was listening to while I wrote 'Where the Wild Things Are.' Those songs - especially 'Wake Up' and 'Neighbourhood' - there's a lot of that record that's about childhood.

It seems like bands have stopped making timeless, great rock albums like they did back in the day.

My dad is a huge folk music fan, so growing up, there were always records playing in my house. Carole King, James Taylor, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles - I grew up with this music, and I was aware of how special this music was to a lot of people.

My listening changed when I heard music from Stax, Atlantic, Motown because by that age I thought anything that my parents listened to must be square. So I had to find my own rock n' roll, as it were, and I found it in black soul music.

My dad influenced my musical taste. I grew up listening to Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones and a bunch of rock music from the '60s. Now, instead of watching TV, I'll play a record from start to finish.

When I was a kid, when I was 16, 17, I'd come home from high school, and my dad collected all of Barbra Streisand's records. And she was very young then. I think she probably had three records out, and she was 21, and we had them all. And I knew every single song, every breath, every elision, every swell. And I sang along to it.

For a long time, when I was very young, I went to go see arena rock bands. I was 16, and it was all I could get in to see, legally. And I saw Led Zeppelin and Ted Nugent and Van Halen and all that.

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

There was always music in my house when I was a kid. On Saturday mornings, my mother would clean house to 45s blaring out the songs of Neil Diamond, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Cat Stevens, Harry Chapin.

I probably spent more time as a kid playing air guitar to Jimmy Page than any other guitar player.

There were a lot of different styles in the house - Motown, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, jazz - and my dad played flamenco guitar. Soon I realized that bass was what was really grooving me.

My parents' record collection was the music I was hearing as long as I can remember, and I would play Otis Redding over and over again.

I've never been a huge Zeppelin fan, much to the chagrin of everybody else in my former band. But certainly those Pink Floyd records, I was really into them, especially 'Dark Side of the Moon.'