Stewart Lee Quotes

I do a cover of a Velvet Underground song, and they were one of the most important bands, for me.

I like their darkness but I also like the pop-side of the Velvet Underground.

When I was 13, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground made more sense to me than anything else.

The Velvet Underground is probably the best band that's ever existed, assuredly the best American one.

I heard the Velvet Underground and that changed things when I was like, 15.

I hated most music in the 1970s, especially disco, but Bowie was edgier.

When I was 14 years old, I was a huge fan of the Velvets, the Stooges and the Modern Lovers. They are my three favourite bands. I never get sick of 'em.

I like Velvet Underground, but I was never really hardcore into them. I like them, and I like Nico, but I won't front like I'm super knowledgeable. I just never got around to it.

The period right before punk rock where people like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop were really strong.

I was a huge Bowie fan since I was 12 years old. That was the first 'punk' rock I got into in the Seventies. I didn't find out about a lot of the other stuff that was going on, like New York Dolls and Roxy Music, until a lot later.

It's hard to imagine the whole punk movement without The Velvet Underground. I toured with them when they did their reunion tour, and no one sounds like that; they are a very unique-sounding band.

Lou Reed was a hero because he was an anti-hero.

The Southern California arena rock, hair metal, laidback hippie garden culture - for many growing up in the '70s and '80s, none of it made us who we were like Lou Reed did.

If you asked me to sing a modern song, I wouldn't be able to - I can't easily slip into that groove. But if it were a song by Nico or The Velvet Underground, fine.

I really liked punk music and experimental music that my brother was taking me to go see in the city, when I was probably, like, 13 years old. I was seeing a lot of teenagers making 'weird' music, and I think that was probably a big part of the reason that I actually started to play myself.

My friend Lou Reed came to the end of his song. So very sad.But hey, Lou, you'll always take a walk on the wild side. Always a perfect day.

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.

When I was little, people like Talking Heads were on the radio. There was something geeky yet groundbreaking about them.

Lou Reed is something like a personal favorite of mine, but you could always put me into that drawer of singers who can't really sing, who speak their songs.

I've been a Nick Cave fan since the early '80s when he was part of The Birthday Party thing singing Australian self-destructive rock band and I've always followed his work and loved it.

Somebody had given me a copy of 'Hunky Dory,' which had yet to be a hit, although it was starting to percolate. I'd seen a couple of pictures of David, with his interesting hairdo and outfits, and I decided to seek him out, which wasn't difficult back then, as he was eager to do any kind of publicity.

I guess, for me, what started me getting real excited about music was the New York punk and new-wave scene. All those bands looked back to the Velvet Underground and the Stooges and the Modern Lovers as well. But that was back when Television were punk, and the Talking Heads were punk.

Hawkwind are one of those bands that people introduce you to because you don't see them on the covers of magazines. I'd heard 'Silver Machine' but Russell Senior, who was in Pulp, got me into them. They had a song called 'Master Of The Universe' and we nicked the title in 1985 for one of our songs.

As a teen, I heard the second Velvet Underground album, 'White Light/White Heat,' and it was too much for my limited scope of appreciation. It was intense, but I didn't get it.

I spent my teens in northern California listening to KALX, KUSF, and KFJC, finding people that changed my life.