Greg Behrendt Quotes

Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes.

Music, Rock and Roll music especially, is such a generational thing. Each generation must have their own music, I had my own in my generation, you have yours, everyone I know has their own generation.

I was a pop-music junkie. My parents were into Frank Sinatra and Doris Day. They weren't too excited when I had Aretha or the Stones pumping.

It takes only one bad amp to turn your ears to oatmeal: That's how old hippies became Yanni fans.

As a kid I was super into all kinds of pop. It wasn't until I became a teenager that I moved more into alternative music and punk rock.

I didn't like progressive jazz or anything. Rock was something I like to listen to.

Why am I a closet country music fan? Because I grew up being into rock, and I always thought that country music was, like, something my mom was into. Like, it wasn't cool. It wasn't happening. They were all singing about driving around in their trucks looking for Lulu.

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.

I always feel like young people are more emotionally in tune with new and timeless music.

Maybe people would be surprised to know that I listen to old Neil Diamond albums from time to time. The man rocks. I defy anyone to prove me wrong.

The people who listened to rock 'n' roll, I thought, were bound together against the people who didn't listen to rock 'n' roll. That, of course, didn't work at all. Your taste in rock 'n' roll does not say anything about you, morally or otherwise.

The world has changed from when I was a young teen feeling ashamed for being gay. The issue of gay marriage is now a political issue. That would have been unthinkable when I was young.

I loved music from the age of eight. Jazz and blues. But also Little Richard and Elvis Presley.

These young people naturally grow up with ideas different from ours, for they are born for times when we shall no longer be here

Was it a risky move? Yes, but at that moment, the reason why I came out is I thought it wasn't going to be a big deal. Maybe I was naive. Maybe I thought it was 2014, and people will understand that there's gay NFL players. There's gay athletes everywhere. But I was clearly wrong. It was a huge deal.

Maybe you just get so attached to the music of your youth that you think it's better than what's coming out now.

The kids are interested in the music of them. They're not interested in mop-tops and Beatle boots and crazy suits. It's all down to the music now - that's what they hear, and that's what they love.

If anybody comes up to you and says, My kid is a conservative - why is that? you say, Remember in the 60′s when we told you if you kept using drugs your kids would be mutants?

Rock-and-roll was an example of change in the body of the culture. I think it's really what helped bring the anti-war movement to its peak and moved people into the streets to seize the day - the movement was the embodiment of what was happening in the music. This is what taught me that it was possible to bring art and activism together. Without that piece, that energetic embodiment piece, the rest is just intellectual construct.

If you're 30, 40 years old, you're not getting listened to by minors. Like, Jay Z has some of the sickest lyrics ever, but I would never buy his CD, just because of my age and because of his age.

The media have just buried the last yuppie, a pathetic creature who had not heard the news that the great pendulum of public consciousness has just swung from Greed to Compassion and from Tex-Mex to meatballs

I suppose Phil Collins offers something for everybody, and in hipdom that's not cool. But in the real world, there's no shame in that at all.

I think there was a long period of time when we got real invested in a youth culture, and not coincidentally it was when the baby boomers, who let's face it, take up a lot of space on the planet, were young.

Personally I feel that real rock 'n' roll may be on the way out, just like adolescence as a relatively innocent transitional period is on the way out. What we have instead is a small island of new free music surrounded by some good reworkings of past idioms and a vast sargasso sea of absolute garbage.

When I was a teenager, the way some of these kids out here be actively gay, it would have been ridiculed in the hood. And now the hood is a bit more accepting. Begrudgingly accepting, but definitely more accepting than 20 years ago when I was a little kid. That doesn't mean that anybody should stop fighting for equality just because people are begrudgingly a little more accepting.