Rob Sheffield Quotes

I still love it. I love lots of other music, too, and always have, but punk's the soundtrack of my youth. I think you never escape the music you're listening to and seeing when you're seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old.

They say the music you listen to in your formative years stays with you and leaves an impression for the rest of your life. For me, the things that I fell in love with happened in the '70s, when artists were nurtured by record companies and it wasn't about singles.

Popular music formed the soundtrack of my life.

But I knew - in the old days, if a song was a good song, I don't care if it was 'Yellow Submarine' or, you know, or 'The Times They Are a-Changin' or 'Don't Be Cruel', you knew it, you know? You heard that song, and you were talking about it, and you knew it.

I still love 'The Cure' more than almost any other band. But they were really, truly like the first band that I really loved and felt was mine, you know. At a pivotal time in my life when I was 13, 14 years old.

If rock & roll is dead and gone, man, I am missing out on it.

Just to know that someone who's 15 years old is listening to my music and the work that I've done - it's definitely a blessing.

Both of my books, 'Love Is a Mix Tape' and 'Talking to Girls About Duran Duran,' are about how music gets tangled up with all our other emotional memories. Since I'm an obsessive music fan, I'm always seeking out new sonic thrills.

I still love to do the old songs. I know some people don't.

People define themselves to some degree by the music that they listened to as teens. My mom had Elvis. Me, I had 'The Who' and later punk rock. Kids who came up in the '80s had other songs and bands. It's a way of placing ourselves culturally and temporally.

I think the most exciting thing is that you expect people our age to know the music, but actually a lot of kids know the music, and if anything is left, we have left really good music, and that's the important part, not the mop-tops or whatever.

I think the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, first of all, has got to be put into the context of being an American cultural showcase. It's there to be a museum showcase of all that's great about American music.

I'm an old-school, embarrassing Joni Mitchell fan. Her music made a hook in my soul and hasn't let go for all these years. I even sing her songs as lullabies to my kids.

I enjoy listening to contemporary rock on the college stations while I'm taking long walks, love gospel and soul music, am fascinated by hip-hop and rap as the new kind of urban 'beat' poetry and, come to think of it, find something interesting about just any kind of music.

You put a song on the record or on tape and you stop singing it. You just don't sit around and sing it anymore unless you're performing. That's kind of sad.

I know that there are a lot of sort of silly things that one thinks as a music listener about bands. I am a fan of many bands.

I am a Yes fan, ultimately. I've been a member of the band, but I was always a fan of the band first.

I have a little history. I met Stone Temple Pilots, and their guitar player was a huge Extreme fan. Somewhere down the road, Extreme made its statement.

Dick Clark's 'American Bandstand' spread the gospel of American pop music and teenage style that transcended the regional boundaries of our country and united a youth culture that eventually spread its message throughout the entire world.

People my age don't always know where their music comes from.

I know when I wear a Led Zeppelin shirt, I am happy to put that Led Zeppelin shirt on. It's not, 'Well, they kind of suck.'

I think I skipped a lot of music, like when I was 17 or 18. I didn't know about a lot of new bands because I was so immersed in older music.

When I was growing up listening to music, it was 2004, when The Starting Line and Finch and The Used were kind of my favorite bands.

People in England were coming up to me, saying, My mother and father turned me on to your music. This happened to me 20 years ago. When I was 40 they were saying that.

I'm not embarrassed by any of my music. I'll even own up to the old Backstreet Boys albums.