Joan Baez Quotes

I'm talking about the '60s really. People go interview these guys and ask them, "Do you still think music can change the world?" I mean, go talk to Graham Nash about that. What's he going to tell you? Ask David Crosby. These guys are still out there. They're playing their hits at Staples Center and those are really valuable songs. I'm talking about a couple of the guys who got knee-deep into really believing music had a great service beyond radio. I believe it did. And I think a lot of those songs are great.

In 1974, when I started working with the material that became 'Horses,' a lot of our great voices had died. We'd lost Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, and people like Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

Elvis' early music has drama because as he sang he was escaping limits.

We were very influenced by The Beatles, no question.

I remember Elvis as a young man hanging around the Sun Studios. Even then, I knew this kid had a tremendous talent. He was a dynamic young boy. His phraseology, his way of looking at a song, was as unique as Sinatra's. I was a tremendous fan, and had Elvis lived, there would have been no end to his inventiveness.

If there hadn't been an Elvis, there wouldn't have been the Beatles.

Before Elvis, everything was in black and white. Then came Elvis. Zoom, glorious Technicolor.

The '60s were a time of great change in American music.

The music I listened to as a kid - the Stones, the Beatles - that was so rebellious at the time, it became mainstream.

I helped make the Sixties swing, and I'm very proud of that.

I had this image before Boy George, before the Beatles, before the Rolling Stones.

No, I don't think rock 'n' roll will ever fade.

When I was a kid, and Elvis Presley broke through to a middle class, white audience, it was a sociological phenomenon that lasted through the Beatles and even a bit through Fleetwood Mac.

Of all the '60s - there was Elvis, there was the Beatles, there was the British invasion, Jimmy Hendrix, and Woodstock - the No. 1 record was 'The Twist.'

Elvis may have been my first hero, but you couldn't relate to him.

I'm influenced a lot by Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, even Paul Weller - Billie Holiday as well: People who wrote and sang songs that were reflective of their times. I quite like that. I quite admire that.

I know they call it the British Invasion, but musically, I call it the British Infusion.

All the best times in music were rebellious. I mean, even like Elvis, people didn't want their daughters paying attention to him. He was considered too sexual!

I think The Beatles are the lasting influence on me, even more so than Dylan.

The Beatles are a passing phase, symptoms of the confusion about us.

Going to America increased the build up on me, especially as the war was going on there. In a way we'd turned out to be a Trojan horse. The 'Fab Four' moved right to the top and then sang about drugs and sex and then I got into more and more heavy stuff and that's when they started dropping us.

I knew the Beatles songs and how influential they are to other bands, but I'm not a fanatic, so I could look outside the box and observe.

Jerry Garcia was a great American master and the Grateful Dead are not just a genuine piece of musical history, but also an important part of American history.

I learned music listening to Elvis' records. His measurable effect on culture and music was even greater in England than in the States.

The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band