Billie Joe Armstrong Quotes

Bands speak for us in this inevitable way that you can't get anywhere else because it is this perfect balance of artistic expression and popular culture.

It's disappointing to see films become pure entertainment, so that it's not an art form.

The work I've done through my Common Culture Music series has enabled me not only to share my joy of music at scale but also promote the artists I love.

I look at it like this: you may only sell 20,000 to 100,000 albums. But those albums are going to be heard by future doctors, lawyers, judges, firemen, etc. Those albums are being sold to the right people that move society. They're interested in what you have to say.

I feel like music is always alive and well.

I think it was Roger Fry who first coined what he took to be a final definition of a work of art, whether it was a painting, building, poem or Hepplewhite chair. He said that the best works of art are finished products that preserve 'a valuable state of mind'.

Rock records. It's the main source of inspiration for people - fans, or musicians, or both - to act out in ways that they wouldn't normally act out. Especially rock critics. Ultimately, records don't really hurt anybody, and neither do reviews.

It was '86. We were a big enough name and we had enough cache that MTV wanted to play us, so, along with Michael Jackson and Madonna, they played our upside-down, black-and-white, backward, single unedited footage of a rock quarry with orange letters over the top of it and called it art.

I wanted to rewrite how rock music was perceived.

My work is not, of course, pure art in the sense that Schmidt-Rottluff's is, but it is art nonetheless... It is all right with me that my work serves a purpose. I want to have an effect on my time, in which human beings are so confused and in need of help.

You can't kill Rock 'n' Roll. It's here to stay

I tried to stick with what I knew best, which is writing rock n' roll songs and melodies. I am as passionate as I was when I was 20.

a work that intends to be art must first be entertaining.

My voice likes rock music. My problem is, I can do a lot of things, but I have to find my own voice.

It's terrible for the culture of music. Like anything that is purely economic, it ignores the most important component.

If an artist tries consciously to do something to others, it is to stretch their eyes, their thoughts, to something they would not see or feel if the artist had not done it. To do this, he has to stretch his own first.

I just know that, right now, ... the biggest record selling business there is is rock and roll.

I think in the world of rock music or whatever it's called - anything outside of Nashville - there's a lot more freedom within that industry to do whatever you want to do.

I believe that artists should be part of the culture. I think that my work clearly bears that out.

As soon as one of my records goes on, it makes a vast portion of the public nervous. They get spooked by it. To some people who have ears to hear, it's a delightful, refreshing change. But to most of the public, it's a load of homemade-sounding nonsense.

I want to make great songs.

In not-for-profit theater, you don't worry so much about how the audience is going to react. You want to make them absorb the piece.

There's this celebrity thing that goes along with making records or being a rock star. I'm into this celebrity thing just enough to let me go on making records and making a living out of it.

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle. The rock stars have assimilated all kinds of philosophies, styles, histories, writings, and they throw out what they have gleaned from that.

The dignity of art probably appears most eminently with music since it does not have any material that needs to be discounted. Music is all form and content and elevates and ennobles everything that it expresses.