Henry Rollins Quotes

Man, I would have loved to have been fully cognisant of the power of Janis Joplin. I would have loved to have been part of the revolution.

Elvis Presley's music said, 'Free your body.' The Beatles said, 'Free your mind.'

Rock and roll is the hamburger that ate the world.

Michael Jackson carried urban America and eventually American society on his vocal cords for a good 25 to 30 years before even hip-hop became the vox populi of America, and then as an adult he shattered racial barriers.

Dick Clark really didn't make rock 'n roll safe for America, as many people think.

There were incredibly few rock songs making it out to the airwaves until the '80s came along.

The Beatles' story is all of our stories. It is about how the youth culture emerged, the drug culture emerged, how politics rose to the fore as a universal debate. It's about rebellion, it's about the growth of the British entertainment system, the growth of the rock n' roll entertainment system.

I think a lot of people came into rock n' roll to try to change the world. I came into rock n' roll to make music.

The biggest thing Motown did was change our social fabric: the way we interacted with each other as human beings.

I consider 'Dope' a part of the new mainstream.

Every so often, you have a producer or a songwriter or both or a team that comes along and really reshapes and redefines sonically what music is and the interpretation of it to the masses.

K-pop has become such a global movement now... We can write a new history that was never possible before.

Remember the Bob Dylan rule: it's not just a record, it's a movement.

It was the case in the 70s and 80s that people believed music could change the world. But now people aren't making music because they want to change the world; they're making music because they want to just make a ton of money.

The Monkees are to the Beatles what 'Star Trek' is to NASA. They are both totally valid in their contexts.

I'm the leader of the show, keepin' you on the go, but I know I can't live without my radio.

You leave a country, they stop playing you on the radio.

I enjoy that the most powerful person in Hollywood is indeed a Black woman in Oprah Winfrey. I'm hoping to just transcend beyond that.

It's crazy when you see very little reflection between what's played on the radio and what people are talking about in the streets. It lets you know how far off we are from a real movement.

Television was the most revolutionary event of the century. Its importance was in a class with the discovery of gunpowder and the invention of the printing press, which changed the human condition for centuries afterward.

Popular culture is inescapable in the U.S. Why not use it?

The Beatles changed the world. They certainly changed my world, and many, many other individuals as well.

Musicians have the power to influence people and along with movie makers, they can reach and influence more people than any group of people, more than scientists and certainly more than politicians.

I don't think that Hollywood will have much to do with changing politics. Hollywood usually reflects things.