Tom Verlaine Quotes

It probably all started with The Beatles, and then I guess it goes out from there. Springsteen... Fleetwood Mac... I mean, that's all so inherent in us that when we're making records now, we take a lot from the artists who are around us.

We had a really vast music collection and I was raised around rock'n'roll, it's just the way it was.

The reason we did 'Land of a Thousand Dances' and 'Gloria' on 'Horses' was because I liked repetitious, three-chord rock songs, but I didn't understand that I could write my own. I didn't realize that you could use those chords a million times.

It's definitely an influence, I mean how can you not say you are influenced to play rock.

When I hear myself singing, I hear Iggy Pop and Jimi Hendrix. There's a conversational thing going on. I suppose it depends on which The Pretenders song you're listening to.

Obviously the people that I admired, like the Beatles, were really into rock'n'roll, but it was already a little past rock'n'roll when I started listening and making my own choices about music.

Rock n' roll means so much more to people; it enriches the culture. Also, it inspires people; there's no half-feeling. When I first got into it, I was inspired by people who had come before me, and I found myself in the position of handing that on.

The many sounds of Memphis shaped my early musical career and continue to be an inspiration to this day.

I think we as a band, as individuals, understand that all popular music stems from blues and jazz and even pop, but rock 'n' roll especially comes from blues.

My voice is a combination of how I grew up and what I was listening to growing up. I like a lot of different kinds of music and am always being inspired in different ways by different artists for different reasons.

I didn't want to go out and change anything. I just wanted to make the music that was part of my background, which was rock and blues and hip-hop.

The New York Dolls are the only band that we grew up on that we haven't played with.

My dad has been playing guitar basically all his life. He's sort of who got me into rock music.

My brother really shaped my musical taste when I was younger. He turned me on to classic rock like Led Zeppelin, and then he got me into R.E.M. and U2.

I don't think I'm turning back the clock by doing these old tunes. I love rock and roll and popular music. It's just that the spirits of the singers whose songs I do are living within me. That's why the songs come out in the voices of the original singers. I'm not doing imitations. That's the way they sound inside me.

I have been influenced by music. I grew up listening to blues, jazz and all.

It's something I've always been passionate about - which is the power of rock and roll itself. I'm a walking example of its power, 'cause I was totally altered in the seminal years of Live by bands like U2 and R.E.M., U2 in particular.

Don't get me wrong, The Beatles are one of our all-time favourite bands, but there's a lot more we were influenced by.

The closest things to an influence would be people like Charlie Watts or Al Jackson. But I didn't really listen to drummers; I basically played what I thought was needed for the Ramones.

I remember hearing people like Joe Cocker, Fleetwood Mac, and Elvis. My parents were big fans of them, and they were the early seeds. My brother was more into Slipknot, and I still listen to them, too, but it wasn't until I listened to Paolo Nutini that it really clicked.

I don't really listen to contemporary R&B with an ear for hearing my influence. Music is a spirit unto itself, and all of us musicians influence each other all along the chain.

My dad turned me onto Led Zeppelin, the Stones, and the Who, but Madonna and pop music came from my mom.

Everybody starts by imitating their heroes. For me it was Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters.

Classic Van Halen made people want to dance and f**k. Modern Van Halen makes you want to drink milk and drive foreign cars.

I write a lot of more instrumental music than I do vocal music. It's because I come out of a background of playing piano and then playing sax for a number of years. I kind of got into rock backwards. A lot of guys go into rock and then get sick of it and then go into something else. I came the other way, so I've always just had a lot more stuff lying around.