Phil Elverum Quotes

Back in the day, in '91 or so, I tried to interview Fugazi for Rolling Stone, which the band felt stood for everything they detested about corporate infiltration of music. They said, 'We'll do the interview if you give us a million dollars of cash in a suitcase.' Which was their way of saying no.

People misinterpret my emotions towards Nirvana because I've said things about how something happened with grunge that took a little bit of fun out of things. It's no offense to Nirvana; they were one of the greats, obviously. But something died there, too, and we haven't quite gotten the groove back.

My style icons are Leigh Lezark, Gwen Stefani and Shirley Manson.

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

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

I listened to all types of music, and obviously when I got to Seattle I was very much aware of the music scene there.

There was this moment when we made 'Superunknown': the Seattle music scene had suddenly ended up on an international stage with huge success.

Shortly after college, I was working in New York City at 'Rolling Stone' magazine.

Legendary photographer Annie Leibowitz persuaded us to pose in our underwear. When the magazine hit the stands we were horrified to see the caption 'Go-Go's Put Out.' Regardless, I was extremely excited to see us at every newsstand on every corner, our faces on the cover of 'Rolling Stone!'

Unlike a lot of my cohorts from the '80s and '90s who totally blamed the shortness of their careers on bands like Nirvana and Alice in Chains and Soundgarden and whatever, I was very into a lot of those bands.

When I first started, in 2006, it was an exciting time. Independent, cool, weird artists were being successful, and magazines were writing about them, and people were getting played on radio that were, like, really good.

I had no idea how much the stuff I was doing was affecting people outside Oakland. At the time, also, hip hop wasn't able to tour because all these clubs that let hip hop come in now, they would never have let hip hop come in.

The formats have changed so much, and even if you look at alternative music today, most of it isn't really that alternative. It's just good, strong, modern music.

You had bands like D.O.A., or Black Flag, and a whole network opened up to trailblazer a counter culture movement. I'm more interested in the less sensational type of stories.

This was an era where I was going out every night seeing Sparks, Berlin, Duran Duran, and Split Enz. Amazing acts doing really weird stuff, and I was very open to music and letting it transform me.

I knew [Kurt Cobain] and his daughter. And Courtney [Love] came and stayed at my house. R.E.M. worked on two records in Seattle and Peter Buck lived next door to Kurt and Courtney. So we all knew each other. I reached out to him with that project as an attempt to prevent what was going to happen.

Punk-rock records came out and you bought whatever you could find. But Devo didn't happen for another three years. Sex Pistols didn't tour the States until '78. At that time, for me, it was really about CBGB, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, the Ramones, and Television.

So many artists who came out during that time, including myself, were able to get on radio. New forms of singer-songwriters developed out of that.

There's not a lot of precedent for weird, bald musicians in the Lower East Side making records in their bedrooms and going on to sell a lot of copies of the record. Especially if you look at the pop climate.

Enuff Z'nuff is one of the most underrated bands in the world!

We had a wonderful time with this kind of grunge awareness, where suddenly rock was cool again. People wanted to head loud guitars. It was a great time, and I'm glad we were there. But the gimmick part has worn off.

I don't like old people on a rock and roll stage. Me included.

Rock and roll never sleeps. It just passes out.

It's not really into the big mass movement in music that I want to do, you know.

Elvis changed the country music scene quite a bit; he almost put country music out of business.