Tom Junod Quotes

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.

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

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

I knew about things like Iggy Pop and The Velvet Underground, weirdly, before I knew about David Bowie. I didn't know what David Bowie was, when I was a kid. I thought he was like Visage.

I'm not shy or reclusive. I just spend my time with people rather than journalists.

Neil Young is the prime example, the grand goal, if you will. He's still shredding, and he never lost his credibility.

The New York Dolls did not think of themselves as punk rock. There was no such term at the time. They were just another band in what was called the New York scene.

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'm totally not media shy and do interviews all the time and go to events and totally play along and actually enjoy talking to journalists most of the time.

I always thought Kurt Cobain was the perfect embodiment of the great alternative guitar player.

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

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.

I have always maintained that Iggy Pop is the Heavyweight Champion of Rock & Roll.

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.

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

Lou Reed's spirit and the way he did things was so important. Him and his music mean so much to me as the years go by.

I love Lou Reed because his voice sounds like your inner conscience.

I got Joan Baez to talk and Alan Ginsberg and some of the guys in the band. And by the end of the piece, another emissary came and said, 'Bob [Dylan] is willing to speak to you now.' And I said with great pleasure, 'No, thanks. The piece is over.'

Is it a different New York since Lou Reed died? It’s been a different New York since I saw him in his sweatpants at the Cozy Soup ‘n’ Burger.

Evidently there are plenty of people in journalism who have neither got what they liked nor quite grown to like what they get. They write pieces they do not much enjoy writing, for papers they totally despise, and the sad process ends by ruining their style and disintegrating their personality, two developments which in a writer cannot be separate, since his personality and style must progress or deteriorate together, like a married couple in a country where death is the only permissible divorce.

I could not conceive that [fans] actually wanted me to sign something. It took a long time for me to figure out (a) just say 'Thank you' and sign the thing, and (b) smile in the picture, because if you try to just half-smile you're going to look constipated.

Artists have a right to be modest and a duty to be vain.

And you can tell that Britney Spears is struggling with who she is. I think she has a team of agents and managers who are saying, yes, push the envelope, kiss Madonna, take off all your clothes. And she’s doing that because she doesn’t want to sacrifice this enormous platform that she’s built. But at the same time, she is sacrificing herself and you can see that in her eyes when she talks.

My genius is not so frail a thing that it cowers from the dirty fingers of newspapernen.

When I'm talking to an artist, I'm not being malicious when I tell them their music is wack. These are artists with mad money and fame so why should they care about my critique?