Ian MacKaye Quotes

The difference between me and the newer artists is that I have the history with the architects, the masters that started the music. I know where the music came from.

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.

You literally cannot deny the fact that rock and roll was born because of blues, and blues is black man's music.

When I lived in Nashville, Tanya Tucker and people like that were coming up, and I'm sure that Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette were going, 'What's that noise? That's not country.' It's always been this battle where whoever comes up behind the reigning stars isn't country enough. There really is a lot more crossover now.

From folk to tribal to Cab Calloway, Cole Porter, Gershwin to the Rolling Stones, whose first record was all covers, to country-western, bebop, blues, and even the referencing in classic hip hop to cliched love ballads of the '80s or whatever - that is kinda gone, and that's just terrifying to me.

Chuck Berry told me if it wasn't for Louis Jordan, he wouldn't have probably ever even got into music. That Louis Jordan changed everything and made him want to become a musician.

I always loved bluegrass, but there was so much I didn't know about American country music in respect to the origins of this country. It was interesting to see the evolution of it.

I'm very interested in music and where these sounds of Western music come from.

All of the most popular music of the '30s and '40s were deeply informed by jazz.

When you talk about *NSYNC or Backstreet Boys - we were like the New Kids, and New Kids were like the Bee Gees. But Girl Radical will be the first ones, and that's a crazy idea. That's what got us so excited.

The Midwest is a musical melting pot and the source and birthplace of several musical genres.

The whole path of American music has been so much about the recognition of stylistic diversity, and the recognition of the importance of music which was from one of the vernacular traditions.

My musical taste has always been wide. I started out as a folky before I moved on to blues and soul.

New York City has more rock history in its 305 square miles than most of America combined.

Guys like me and Ray Charles, when we was coming up through our days, country music and soul music was just a very thin line between the two.

You know, songs often have a very coloured past. They might have something about them but it still doesn't work, so someone else adds a bit, and someone else adds a bit so perhaps one day I'll know its full history.

Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context.

The first notes I still play when I start a sound check are classical. Those are my roots.

Music is thousands and thousands of years old and I don't think that basic, primitive connection to the language of music ever changes.

If we look at music history closely, it is not difficult to isolate certain elements of great potency which were to nourish the art of music for decades, if not centuries.

Without the blues, modern music would be nothing like it is now - not remotely.

We have to let the younger generations take our music - and approach it the way they want - but just teach them where it all comes from.

The whole history of music has turned out to be something perfect. It's all come around. The music we did with Funkadelic and Parliament was the DNA for hip-hop.

None of the jazz greats made music for the purpose of you going to check out music before them. Michael Jackson didn't make music so you could go check out Sam Cooke.

A lot of people don't know that the Go-Go's came from the L.A. punk scene.