Varg Vikernes Quotes

Roadrunner wanted to make Born in the Flood the next Nickelback, but I didn't want to be that. I didn't want to be a huge rock star playing songs I didn't like. I didn't want to be stuck playing 'Anthem,' the song everybody liked but I didn't want to put on the record, for the next five years.

Any band that is out there chasing it is doing more destruction to music then someone who is out there playing what they truly feel.

I wouldn't use a song I didn't think was my brand or image.

My second record I used a producer, which was frustrating in a way, because I think a lot of the punky spirit and provocative nature of the lyrics didn't come across - the music was pretty.

Ideally, musicians belong outside the Establishment. When they cross that line, it's like something in them has died.

I don't really set out to please anybody, and I don't think I ever have. I have occasionally been encouraged to try to write something specifically for the purpose of releasing it as a single to get radio play. Those are not my best songs, as a rule.

The potential success that could come with signing with a major label didn't quite outweigh how important it was for me to make my music the way I knew it needed to be made.

It would be awesome to stay popular, but if I was only an underground artist, I would be okay with that.

I didn't say I wasn't gonna do rockabilly. I just said I ain't gonna sing no song that ain't a country song. I won't be known as anything but a country singer.

At the same time, I definitely want to expand my fan base but not at the expense of prostituting my music or heart.

I don't have to compete in the charts. I can just be myself as a musician, a songwriter and play with the musicians that I really love.

I don't want to be a small-time, independent, successful rapper.

Most of the people who call me a sellout were 7 when I was down face-first in the punk trenches.

In my opinion, some of the hip-hop records that come out, people are willing to compromise. I'm not.

My more risky or avant garde music is not that well known to a wider audience, but I wish it was.

When I started to write music that was completely divorced from any sort of idea of commercial success, the real me started to come out. Normally, a musician in a session for a pop record would have to discard a lot of ideas because they won't fit, because they're not commercial.

I don't think we were anti-commercial. But we were anti-contrivance, and like Zeppelin, we found dignity through the music we were playing.

Our first album didn't work because we tried to be something we're not.

I never wrote music for the mainstream.

I guess the bottom line is I don't make music that is consumed en masse.

I'm not someone who can just be paid to play keyboards on songs. I tried to do it - I needed the money, but it made me really unhappy and ill to be doing it.

We don't feel like we changed from rave, because we were never rave, to punk, because we're not punk.

I was pretty strict in high school about who I would listen to. Musicians like Neil Young, Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell... who were, in my opinion, great writers. The music mattered, but it held hands with the lyrics, and the personality was, overall, unsullied.

You can have a favorite band, but when they sign with a major label... maybe a new producer says, 'You can't do that, take this down a notch.' And you'll keep listening, but you'll always think their first album was their best album.

It's not really into the big mass movement in music that I want to do, you know.