John Rzeznik Quotes

Dropkick Murphys get me going, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana... plus, all the regular hip-hop stuff.

We were perceived as a post-grunge band.

I'm always into rock n' roll and indie rock.

When I was in college in Philly, there was a lot of post-punks... hardcore... like, rock. Sixties, retro, proto-Strokes kind of bands.

I was real into Devo, Pavement, Captain Beefheart, and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

I never really followed grunge.

I absolutely think the Seattle grunge sound was instrumental to my music education.

Live are a really good band. I like Stone Temple Pilots, Radiohead I love. Even Oasis.

Pixies and Sonic Youth were so important to the eighties.

The first music I ever got into was the '80s alternative bands that my brother listened to, like The Cure and The Smiths and R.E.M. and Fugazi. I can remember specifically saying The Cure was my favorite band back in second grade.

I don't really listen to the radio anymore, but some of the more contemporary people I like are Stereolab, Spiritualize, Yo La Tengo and Bedhead. There are other things too, like Pavement. They're a great band, with really good lyrics. But generally, I'm not overwhelmed by the state of indie-rock.

I was just a kid in 1987 when I heard of the Pixies, the year after I graduated high school. But I had my band together, and my best friend at the time, Corey Hickock, who was the guitar player in the band that would become STP, Mighty Joe Young, turned me on to the Pixies.

We were fans of Green Day and Nirvana or whatever, but the bands we really loved were Chicago bands that didn't really sound anything like Alkaline Trio.

Thanks to the arrival of such spirited and purposeful groups as X, the Blasters, R.E.M., and the Replacements, American rock has made a spectacular comeback.

The bands that we've found we have something in common with are bands like The National or Tegan And Sara, and I feel like that's because all three of us come from more alternative rock backgrounds.

I'm not an '80s fan. I'm more '70s New York pre-punk kind of thing, and I guess I grew up with '90s grunge, post-punk pop music.

I love music, particularly Radiohead, TV on the Radio, The XX and Tribes - they're a great new band from Camden and well worth a look at.

I love '90s grunge and punk.

There hasn't been anything real since grunge. That was the last movement led by music or an art form.

Now they have banging guitar and no bass and call it rock, but that's not what I call rock.

I love punk rock, but I also love metal.

My favorite type of music to sing and to listen to, you know, rock. It's not always metal, but you know, half the time it is. Metal's cool, you know? Not everybody on 'American Idol' listens to metal.

Rock music is niche.

Doolittle was a major influence on the Seattle grunge scene, which emerged in the early 1990s.

Guided By Voices was huge when I was 16. Then I got into the Beatles, then classical music, Beethoven.