Stephen Sprouse Quotes

We were just a bunch of high school kids who got into the Ramones together.

The last true punk band to get a major label contract was The Dickies.

When punk came along, I found my generation's music. I grew up listening to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd, 'cause that was what got played in the house. But when I first saw the Stranglers, I thought, 'This is it.'

I started going to Madame Louise's, the lesbian club where all the punk bands used to go - the Sex Pistols, the Clash. I remember seeing Billy Idol walk in there; he was gorgeous.

I was a punk when I was 15 - I was definitely into it in a big way and loved it - but I came to London when punk was maybe where you'd say punk is dead.

I made the big turnaround in the early Nineties when I started hearing all the tenth generation punk bands like Green Day and Offspring and all those people. It just made me fall in love with punk again and remember my roots, and since that time I've always wanted to do more of that kind of music again.

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.'

Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day always says we were influences on him, because he does melodic but distorted, like what we were doing. The Ramones were doing it. We were doing it. The Buzzcocks, all those bands.

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 Sex Pistols came through Atlanta, and I got to go see them. That was historic. It blew me away; it was so much fun. I bought 45s of bands you don't hear about anymore.

The Ramones are an original rock and roll group of 1975, and their songs are brief, to the point, and every one a potential hit single.

Hardcore bands were coming out with names like Urban Waste and The Mob, you know, a lot of kind of tough names. So Beastie Boys was the stupidest name we could come up with. And unfortunately, it stuck.

Starting out really punk came from not knowing any better and listening to music like that, not knowing how to play music - well, still not knowing how to play music.

I love biographies. I read Patti Smith's 'Just Kids.' I'm into that time frame in New York, the '70s and '80s. In art school, I read 'Close to the Knives,' the autobiography of the artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz.

I love the Sex Pistols. I'm a big Beach Boys fan and a huge Zeppelin and Queen fan.

There's a punk-rock attitude, clearly, to 'Hated.' There's even a punk-rock attitude to 'The Hangover,' I think. We start the movie with a Glenn Danzig song.

When I look at it now, the whole punk thing is sort of comedy in a weird way.

All of the punk-rock bands of the era would come in and play, and my job on Punk Rock Night was that I would go into the slam pit, and... I was 24 or 25, and I'd slam dance in the pit.

I went to UC Berkeley for college, and it was during the period when the whole punk movement was happening.

Growing up in San Diego, I can remember going with my brother to see bands like Pennywise and NOFX - good punk bands that were fast and tight.

I was in a little punk band and we put out a few punk records that weren't very political, at all.

I always think the Sex Pistols and the Ramones as very, very important because they stripped things down.

It's not every day you get to create a band like the Sex Pistols, and what it changed, on a musical level. I love that we've done something that was important.

I think people are too hard on the Pistols. The Pistols started the whole punk thing and never saw much money.

There are several books out on punk history, but I haven't read any of them. I was there.