Penelope Spheeris Quotes

So many big magazines just dissed the whole punk thing as nothing, but really, it was a big thing. It really changed, and that's what we wanted to do - change the system.

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

I think there were early critics who wanted us to change the world because the Sex Pistols failed.

Punk was more based on social change than on music, so it didn't bother me too much. It wasn't really a musical threat.

It's funny I'm talking to 'Rolling Stone' right now, because back then, it was like, 'Punk rock? Put it back. It's just a flash in the pan.'

Dylan captured what was on a million minds and turned it into poetry. With 'Blowin' in the Wind' or 'The Times They Are A-Changin',' he set a whole new standard.

When punk really started to happen, it was a reaction against the disco craze of the time.

There hasn't been anything real since grunge. That was the last movement led by music or an art form.

The deeper changes wrought by the end of a particular outlaw culture: something will come of that ... and it won't be what we expect.

Rock 'n' roll was two pegs below being a prisoner of war back then.

I think punk rock, especially for me, was a big middle finger to this whole talent thing.

Grunge was, to me, the last big movement. It had such an impact on pop culture. We haven't really seen anything like that since, and we may never again. Things have changed; the digital age has changed things.

I can't sing that well, but when punk-rock came along, it changed all that.

I was fortunate enough to be living in Hollywood, CA, when the underground punk rock music scene started. It was a small group of artists, misfits and weirdos, where everyone was welcomed and encouraged to express themselves.

I saw the Clash in '79 at the Paramount in Seattle, and it changed my whole life.

The Knack were a very, very powerful band, and you got to understand, when they came in, all the punk stuff was still going on. There was an amazing conflict within the scenes.

The Ramones were inspiring a lot of bands that couldn't master their instruments.

I always thought we had more in common with punk than with anything else, but we had long hair, so we didn't fit in that box.

Rock n' roll is over, don't you get it? It lasted 25 years and now gets wiped out. The Sex Pistols were the bullet in the brain. They were the last rock and roll band.

I don't know what you wanna describe as Rock 'n' Roll, but I certainly thought that 60s stuff, Bob Dylan and the Beatles, changed the world a little bit. But the effect seems to have retreated. I think it's harder than we think to change the world. These things go in cycles. It doesn't seem to have done an awful lot of good, does it? You know, all the talk of racial harmony and equality in the world... we haven't got a long way since the 60s.

Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.

If punk was about getting rid of hippies, then I'm getting rid of grunge.

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

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

Grunge is a hippied romantic version of punk.