John Cooper Clarke Quotes

Playing in London in 1979 was exciting: it was at the start of new wave, the transition period after punk, and there were a lot of radical, fashionable young people on the streets and in the venues.

When the punk rock thing happened, I thought, 'Right, I have one chance here to be seen as part of some wider social phenomenon.'

When I was a teenager, you were either a punk, a skinhead or a mod, or you weren't on the scene. Me and my mates were skinheads.

I do fear for the generations of people who came of age thinking that pop-punk is what punk is, and that all the rebellion you need is just to stick your tongue out in the mirror every once in a while.

Punk was defined by an attitude rather than a musical style.

I was raised on Nirvana and flannel shirts and Rage Against the Machine, and I sort of describe my youth as rebellious and always fighting the system.

I'm embarrassed to reveal that I never went to CBGB's in the '80s. I was never cool enough to be a punk, and I wouldn't have had the stamina, or the discipline, for straight-edge.

My parents were worried about me, certainly when I became so deeply interested in music and people like the New York Dolls who, at the time, were very peculiar indeed.

Punk is not really a style of music. It was more like a state of mind.

Where there is young people and vitality, you're going to find punk rock.

I was a nerdy punk-rock kid.

For us, punk rock and even hardcore music was something we did because we didn't fit in in high school. We had nowhere to go, so we went to shows.

To be involved in the subculture of punk rock puts you in a minority.

I was always a punk rock skate kid from a very young age.

I remember being really young - being 13 or 14 - when I first was really excited about punk rock as an idea, and I was like, 'Don't ever not be punk. Don't ever not be punk.' Telling that to myself, I guess it was like self-defense against the scary world around me.

A lot of punk rock. I listen to various stuff just cuz my friends now listen to a lot of different bands. I listen to a lot of underground stuff like jungle music.

Punk and all that was just an image that ripped people off. Johnny Rotten's a wanker, and that's all there is to it.

Punk rock was the tsunami that threatened to drown us all in 1977.

When Punk Rock happened, it created an opening in the culture... it made it ok to think you could play music, even though you had no musical training.

I grew up in the '90s. I listened to a lot of The Clash, Velvet Underground and Roxy Music. I wasn't into Boyzone, or anything.

Punk rock will never die, until something more dangerous replaces it.

Punk was over in two years. That was the only damn good thing about it.

Rock n' roll is dirty, and it's bad, and it's either clever or it's not clever.

There are a lot of bands who claim to be punk and they only play the music, they have no clue what it's all about. It's a lifestyle. It's not about popularity and all that crap.

England in the '60s and the '70s was everything that history has said; it was phenomenally exciting, musically.