David Johansen Quotes

When I was growing up in the early '70s and really getting into music, waiting outside the record store for that 45, waiting for a single from The Dead, The Clash, David Bowie, or T-Rex or something to be there. There was something about that that was so special.

You know you're a hopeless record nerd when your time travel fantasies always come around to how cool it would be to go back to 1973 and buy all the great funk and jazz and salsa records that came out that year on tiny obscure labels and are now really rare and expensive.

I wouldn't wish a night of 1971 television on my worst enemy. But the records of 1971, again, still live for us now. And they had the benefit at the time of having the kind of uninterrupted, unimpeded concentration of a huge generation of people. Because the only thing I wanted to spend money on when I was 21 was records.

My dad has a really great record collection that basically went up to the year I was born: 1984.

I listen to a lot of old music, like Joni Mitchell and David Bowie.

No one's playing records anymore, so find your favorite and frame it, then get rid of the rest - try selling or donating them.

The first record I bought myself could have been 'Oh Lonesome Me' by Don Gibson or 'Wake Up Little Susie' by the Everly Brothers.

You had to go to a different part of town from where I was to get Muddy Waters singles. I had him on singles.

My real interest in music was the old 78 records and the sound of the music. I loved it and began to realize that one of the main sounds on those old records I loved was the guitar.

I do - very specifically, I remember Bessie Smith; I used to collect 78 records that I would buy from the St Vincent de Paul store at five cents apiece, and I did this indiscriminately. I would just take whatever was there. And I listened to Patti Page and Walter Huston, 'September Song.'

Every single record I have is a fossil.

I started buying vinyl records when I got into punk music because, in the punk scene in New Jersey, vinyl was more like a necessity than a luxury.

I had a couple CDs. But I never had that first concert experience, that first record thing.

I have a lot of analog. I think a lot of people do. There are a lot of people that are re-discovering it. I still have a lot of my old records from back in the day. It's a joy to play things like Junior Wells' 'Hoodoo Man Blues,' and John Mayall & The Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton. There's a warmth that you can still feel.

I used to love to look at cover art for vinyls.

I started using vinyl because I stole all my parents' records when I was 10. I didn't think about sound quality then, but I always loved how they sounded.

I remember the first 45 record I bought. It was called 'A Dog a Donut'; it was a breakbeat. Actually, I think I bought two at one time, and the other one was 'Dance to the Drummer's Beat.' Those are breakbeats. I paid a dollar for it, for each one. Your average producer or DJ would know who came out with those.

I still play my old vinyl LPs - I like the scratches - and I miss browsing in record shops, because they held great nostalgia for me.

When I was a teenager, I was mostly getting tapes and CDs, and somebody hipped me to the fact that you can get things on vinyl that are not necessarily available on any other fomat.

When I began to interview people from the '60s, my first question was always, 'What was your favorite record?'

If you go to Japan, they're still buying vinyl, and they want the education. They know who's playing on what tracks from the '60s and the '70s - who the guitar player is, who the drummer is, who the producer was, what studio it was recorded in. That's how I grew up listening to music. We bought albums. We read the liner notes. It was important to know the whole history behind it.

People are buying more vinyl now than they did in the late '90s or 2000s. I like having different mediums of the record. It's always interesting to see how the tapes end up looking because they are so tiny.

The first record I bought may have been Del Shannon's 'Runaway.'

The album's not dead for me; I still buy vinyl albums.

I was in Paris for nine years, starting in '98. One of the great things when I was first there were these wonderful CD collections, selling for almost nothing. For ten euros, you'd get three CDs of all the Gershwin songs.