Vinnie Paul Quotes

I felt very proud to be part of a music scene that was changing the face of commercial music and rock music internationally, but I also felt like it was necessary for Soundgarden - as it was for all of these Seattle bands - to prove that we deserve to be on an international stage, and we weren't just part of a fad that was based on geography.

It's hard for people to realize now, but my gosh, when I was in school, you could not name a group that was less cool than Kiss. Going in to school with a Kiss T-shirt, you were asking for ridicule. In '77, they were one of the biggest bands in the world, but by '80, there was a severe backlash.

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

Metal is still the biggest music now in America.

Where I come from it was really unheard of to be at a party and someone says, 'What kind of music do you make?', and you say, 'Pop music.' You may as well have 'I'm not cool' stamped on your forehead.

I consciously did not want to put a sub-Mr. Bungle band on the map. I don't think the world needs that.

I've seen those kids at the shows, I can hear them, and I can certainly tell the difference between one of our fans and a Fall Out Boy fan who's just there because they heard we were hot.

We've got great fans that rock and roll won't have, because you can have a one-hit record and country music used to, not so much anymore and you have a fan forever.

If we play to first time Blink 182 listeners, it's good they are listening to us and not the Backstreet Boys. Old Fans or new fans, it's all the same to us.

Only two to three per cent of an audience is interested in words and pays attention to lyrics; most of the rest of it is about image or the beat or the sound, or else it's a tribal thing - country & western, rap, heavy metal, with historical folk rock off in some kind of cult.

We grew up listening to alternative music from the '90s, and there was no shame in being on a major label and still making the music you wanted to make. I feel like rap rock came around and drew a line in the sand, and everybody that was like me ran away from that and started making indie-rock.

Rock in the mainstream culture has lost a lot of its mojo.

For a long time I was trying to be poppier and younger. I didn't want to be on public radio or do any of that stuff for older people. Then I realized that that is exactly what I listen to.

Bon Jovi's trick is to use heavy-metal chords and still sound absolutely safe. Rock & roll used to be rebellion disguised as commercialism; now so much of it is commercialism disguised as rebellion.

When 5150 came out rock was king. Post Nirvana and Pearl Jam 1996 is a different story.

There's always people saying that rock is dead, rock is over. People are always out to kill rock and roll.

I never understood bands saying Nirvana had anything to do with derailing their career. Maybe those bands didn't have the goods.

The stores and the things like that, the business side of things came out at the point when, I'd say probably in the early '70s, it looked like the year of the singer-songwriter was over, 'cause music changed in our time and the spotlight was out.

I was a fan of heavy music - first metal, then punk, then hip hop.

Nirvana was pop. You can have distorted guitars and people say it's alternative, but you can't break out of pop music's constructs and still get extensive radio play and media coverage.

Japan has really great fans for all kinds of music. I think they're keeping metal alive.

I started a big band when grunge was popular. I mean, that didn't make much sense.

Our songs did not transcend being R&B hits. They were R&B hits that white kids were attracted to. And if people bought it, it became rock & roll. That's marketing. Why couldn't it still be R&B? The bass pattern didn't change. The song didn't change. It was still 'Yakety Yak' and 'Searchin'.'

I think the singer/songwriter genre is going to be like bluegrass and jazz. You can make a living at it, but it's not part of the musical mainstream anymore.

I think the people who are sitting in their living room doing those, 'Let's take country music back' blogs and all that stuff, that's crazy to me. No one's saying that about rock & roll, and no one sounded like the Beatles since 1960. No one says that about R&B, and no one sounded like the Commodores since 1970.