Dexter Holland Quotes

I realise there's an innate paradox in promoting oneself on the one hand and saying, 'Oh, I don't want to be famous,' on the other.

It's such a paradox. You come from this place where you want fame; you don't want to be bourgeois, but you want to be successful. You want to be accepted, but you also want to be going against the grain. You want to be on the outside, but you want to be on the inside.

I tell myself I use art to promote dissent, but maybe I am just using dissent to promote my art. I plead not guilty to selling out. But I plead it from a bigger house than I used to live in.

The artists in country music who stopped having hits are the ones who were led into something that wasn't them.

I would love to make my music and be completely anonymous, but that doesn't work. You can't have success and be faceless.

If you go to Hollywood, you've already sold out.

I've always had a lot of ambivalence about fame and celebrity.

Who decides what is and what isn't punk? I want to write songs that people hear and feel, and I want to be successful and reach a big audience. I'm not trying to be the coolest guy in the world; I'm trying to write songs that mean something to people. As you get successful, sometimes you lose one set of fans and gain another.

I don't wanna be a rock star. I don't believe in rock stars. If you really examine what goes with being a rock star, I've avoided that really well.

When you're rich and famous you are the dominant force in a relationship, even if you try hard not to be. I've talked of sacrificing everything for Fleetwood Mac, but I realize now that it is simply the only thing I've ever wanted to do.

I'm of the establishment but anti-establishment.

The Animals were their own worst enemy. The Animals were a band that couldn't live up to their name. I was the singer in the band and as long as I was enjoying myself I would keep on working with the band. But it got to be rather nasty once the big money showed up - things started to turn toxic.

When you grow up in the music industry, trying to be Britney Spears because that's what sells records and then you realize, 'All I have to do is be myself? I should have thought of that a long time ago,' it feels good to have success come from what's actually inside of you.

Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?

Elvis is this thing, this commodity, and people forget that he was a real person.

When you're young and idealistic, you don't care: you'll play to no one, in your bedroom - like kids with football - you'll play anywhere; you just love the music. And then, bang - soon as you're in the industry, you think that's the dream. But that's when the dream starts to end.

I've always said it's easier for bands to make a hard stance - like, we don't do commercials or whatever, blah blah blah - when you've sold billions of records. It's super-easy to be righteous when you're rich.

That's the nature of the business. You can have a hit and then nothing happens all of a sudden. But I don't resent it. Hits don't make great artists.

I know, if I would have won 'X-Factor' and if I would have continued in that lane, I would have spiraled out of control. Performing on there was good, but it wasn't me. It was me compromising for the judges, just different people around.

I'm punk, but I love gold.

It's really weird how the rock world is quickly becoming like the jazz world. How if you do OK, or get a tiny bit of success, that's considered a sellout, whether you did anything different or not.

Obviously, I would like to play to bigger audiences and have a bit more success, but not if I have to commercialize.

Whether I'm on a major or an indie, I don't think this is important, but at the same time I do.

How can a song all about struggling with the afterglow of fame thrust someone into fame? How can a lyric like, 'I'm just a singer who already blew his shot,' give a singer another shot? I don't know... but it's funny.

I was really wanting to be a rock star. I was saying, "I am going to have a fancy car, I got to have fancy clothes, and I have got to play the whole role." Obviously, I meant business.