Elle King Quotes

I actually started playing in little cafes around New York, and I have a lot of good friends of mine who are musicians who are struggling in New York.

I was in a band when I was 15. We were a glam band. Then I couldn't afford to buy makeup. At the time that was the thing.

When I was 16, I was in Boston and some friends said, 'You want to go to New York?,' I went with my roommate... These guys said, 'We're going to this club. Just don't go in the washroom.' It was CBGB. I had no idea what it was or the history of all the music. All I knew was this was my first 21-and-over club and I managed to get in!

I came to New York for the first time with Peter Buck at age 19. We spent a week living out of a van on the street in front of a club in the West 60s called Hurrah. It's where Pylon played. I saw Klaus Nomi play there. And Michael Gira's band before he did Swans-they all wore cowboy boots and were so cool and had great hair. I was so jealous.

I got to be about 13 and everyone started playing guitars and being in rock bands. There was no place for me with my trumpet and I wasn't cool anymore. Although now if I played the trumpet it would be the coolest thing in the world.

There was a telemarketing job one summer in high school that I was rejected for. I still walk by the building that I actually had the interview in. It's still in New York, and I always think about that job and why I didn't get it.

I wanted to be in a band that gave bang for the buck. I wanted to be in the band who didn't look like a bunch of guys who, you know, should be in a library studying for their finals.

I had a band with a girl in New York, and we would go around and do gigs. And then I happened to start getting work as an actress.

My first job in NYC was playing a gig in the early nineties at CBGBs.

Since I was a teenager, I wanted to be in a band with my mates: my pure image of a band.

In cities like New York and Austin, there's much more of a social context for music than in other places.

I went to art school, and I wanted to be an artist since I was 5. I basically moved to New York to do art, and I just sort of fell into doing music at an early age.

The jazz boom was goin' on then so there was a lot happenin' in New York at that time.

I was always singing but didn't plan on pursuing it seriously. When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn - I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point - and that was it.

I'd wanted to be a writer and when I came back to New York worked as a musician too, but I found my writing starting to get more and more referential to cinema.

Being in a band turns you into a child and keeps you there.

You're surrounded by electronic music in New York. I mean New York is one of the few places in North America where electronic music is the prevalent form.

I think you can totally be a totally normal kid from the suburbs of Chicago and go off and play shows. It's one of those things that when you go home, you're still the nerd you were when you left, and your parents still get to yell at you about cleaning up your room, and your girlfriend still drags you to the pet store.

I used to perform all the time but I haven't performed in New York in a very long time.

When I got old enough to go to night clubs to hear that music at the age of 15.

When I moved to New York to act I was no good at working restaurants - hosting, waiting, bussing, dishwashing - I wasn't good at any aspect. But I did have a guitar. So I would sing 'Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,' but you would only hear the chorus because the train comes by every 30 seconds.

New York seems to be an El Dorado for keyboard instruments. I soon found employment with a piano manufacturer. It’s a pretty well-paying job. The growth of wealth in the United States promises great opportunities for piano manufacturers. You will hardly believe it, but in nearly every household there is a piano. Family music is a part of daily life here.

I met Tupac through Queen Latifah in New York at this party that we were at, at a place downtown called Big City Diner.

For a long time, when I was very young, I went to go see arena rock bands. I was 16, and it was all I could get in to see, legally. And I saw Led Zeppelin and Ted Nugent and Van Halen and all that.

I have been making hip-hop since I was a kid growing up in New York in the '80s and '90s. It's always been a hobby of mine - I've been making beats and writing songs for as long or longer than I've been acting.