Thomas Haden Church Quotes

I was not a big Allman Brothers fan but I could relate to that because that is what the flavor of the day was at that time - at least it was like that for me.

The first thing I remember hearing was just the dance music that was in the charts when I was growing up. I don't remember many of the names of specific tracks - they were just kind of early acid house things.

When I was growing up on Loch Lomondside, one of the first albums I ever bought was Marley's 'Uprising.' I guess that would have been 1980 - just before he died.

I must have been about 13 when I first heard Linkin Park and, to be honest, music had never played that much of a part in my life to that point.

Where I lived, on Long Island, you had the radio stations that always played Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath and AC/DC and all that. I grew up on all that stuff.

I like flipping Coldplay. And I like Jessie Ware. But I'm sure how we grew up was totally different.

I remember when I was about 15 and still listened to Pet Shop Boys and Chas And Dave, some lad at school lent me a Blur tape, and it had on it a song called 'Bank Holiday.' I said, 'What's this? I liked that tape, but that one song is a bit fast'. He said, 'Yeah, it's punk. It depends what mood you're in.' And then something sort of clicked in me.

At Age 11, I used to listen to Madonna's Immaculate Collection every day

A lot of our fans, they always say Salt-N-Pepa and Spinderella was the soundtrack to their lives.

I do remember seeing Audio Adrenaline and The Newsboys, basically Christian rock, because that was what I was allowed to see by my parents.

When I was 12 years old, my dad got into country music. My first CD was Wynonna Judd, and I loved it.

The punches came fast and hard, lying on my back in the school yard.

That was my intention, was to have it be from the perspective of my high-school-aged self, and to try and emulate the music that I listened to at that time. So to write essentially like a pop-punk song about musicals. I wanted the dichotomy of the tone of the music with the lyrics and my singing voice.

I can't write a lie; the world of imagination is no good. I objectively capture my own experiences and those of my friends. I want to put true feelings into words. If I make a song when I'm sad, it's a dark one, but I think that's good. No matter when I want to be true to myself.

Someone's parents have been singing entirely the wrong sort of songs.

I don't physically put Appetite For Destruction in and listen to it, but I hear it on the radio or at sporting events or wherever else it pops up, and it's great. I dig everything about it. When I hear Appetite, it sounds like exactly what it was. It sounds like a record made by an angry bunch of kids.

I've listened to Dylan my entire life. My dad was a huge Bob Dylan fan, so we listened to his music, Cat Stevens, Simon & Garfunkel, and all that kind of stuff. It opened up a whole world of this music that I'm now obsessed with.

My musical life started with hearing and being fascinated by contemporary music.

Part of me also knows that this generation is the least racist and most pro-gay, so that's great. But they have a real lack of gravitas. And they have no taste in music. Vampire Weekend? Can we play some music, please? Can we rock out for a minute? Where's your Metallica?

I discovered lots of music; electronic synth bands from the mid-'80s like Depeche Mode, Soft Cell and Cabaret Voltaire. My friends and I used to take two-hour trips to the record store in Newcastle and we started buying copies of The Face and i-D. And then I went to art school and as time progressed, I ended up where I am now.

Right away, I knew I didn't want to have that look of other guys with long hair and bell-bottom pants, because everybody else had that look. I kind of adopted my boarding-school look, which made me stand out. Then the next thing you know, the first song on my first record is a song called "School Days." It's about going to the boarding school I went to. So then I just started to write about myself. The very first song I ever wrote was about a guy I met in a boatyard that we were working in. So I've always had this thing about sticking to more or less what I knew.

I lived in Detroit until I was six. My older sister was living with us, and she listened to the Ohio Players and Stevie Wonder, so I grew up listening to stuff like that.

Even if I know that really it's not a great song, even if it's a naff song but I have a good memory of it, then to me that's a great song.

I wanted to get a guitar [when I was 13] so I could play punk songs because kid taught me power chords at summer camp. He was like, "You could play all punk songs if you just learn this chord and just move it around on the guitar".

The young are of age when they twitter like the old; they are driven through school to learn the old song, and, when they have this by heart, they are declared of age.