Benji Madden Quotes

When I was in college in Philly, there was a lot of post-punks... hardcore... like, rock. Sixties, retro, proto-Strokes kind of bands.

I loved all that riot-grrl scene and Nation of Ulysses and Bikini Kill and Huggy Bear. I loved it. It was the moment sort of first growing up where bands had stopped looking like roadies.

The Butcherettes are led by a female singer, and they're sort of wild.

If you go back and listen to the album 'Name' was on, there were a lot of garage songs on it.

There are always young bands playing in their garages. A lot of punk rock is not going to be in the mainstream. It's below the radar. The beauty of it is that you're not supposed to always know. It's subterranean.

Devo and The Cramps didn't get big until they went to New York City. Chrissie Hynde didn't get big until she moved to London. When I was growing up, there wasn't even a place to play - just one little bar. If we wanted to have a gig, then we had to drive 45 minutes up to Cleveland.

I started making music with my band in the '80s, so I am more product of post punk than classical music, and I have always carried on this way.

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

I love punk, I love a lot of British Invasion bands, I love garage bands.

The whole slacker generation totally didn't apply to us musically.

The alternative scene, for a couple years now, has been taken seriously and that's a cool thing. I don't think it's exploded or anything, but I think it's pretty cool that it still exists, it's still affecting people.

Great rock n' roll comes from suburbia.

All the serious bands, all the punks, came from Bristol.

Thanks to the arrival of such spirited and purposeful groups as X, the Blasters, R.E.M., and the Replacements, American rock has made a spectacular comeback.

When I was 16, 17 years old, I became aware of music coming out of Olympia, Wash., which is the state capitol and about an hour south of Seattle. And there were bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile and Heavens To Betsy, and for the first time, I heard my story being explained to me, being sung to me.

Growing up in the suburbs, I used to listen to punk rock, Brand New, Taking Back Sunday. And no one from my high school listened to it.

We were fans of Green Day and Nirvana or whatever, but the bands we really loved were Chicago bands that didn't really sound anything like Alkaline Trio.

I was a failed grunge kid who was too nerdy to totally get down with rock.

Warped Tour is completely in a league of its own. It's this crazy cross between a real, full tour and a festival.

I was fortunate enough to be living in Hollywood, CA, when the underground punk rock music scene started. It was a small group of artists, misfits and weirdos, where everyone was welcomed and encouraged to express themselves.

The music industry is changing. You only hear a sprinkling of big names, but there are a lot of really wonderful young musicians with great voices and lyrical content who have refined their sound. They're up in here, so don't think they're not. There's this wealth of talent below the surface that's ready to explode.

When we first came out it was this happy accident, and I was sort of into hardcore at the time. Jordan our singer was really into Jawbreaker and a lot of indie rock bands and old Dischord bands, and sort of like more of the indie side of music. Our bass player was really into West Coast punk.

I came up in the punk rock scene of Seattle.

When I joined the band, I hadn't been introduced to a lot of these bands on the scene - no emo bands or punk bands. The only band I knew was My Chemical Romance.

I got into Nirvana, and it was my sort of awakening into the idea that music could be like rough and crazy and local. And so I started to realize that there were bands playing in my town, Anacortes.