Benji Madden Quotes

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

I've always been a rocker. Like ever since I was really young. I had a crush on the Green Day guys. That's always been what I was like and been my interest.

I remember listening to Cube's music when I was like 14 years old, my friends listening to it up in Toronto.

Everything you listen to when you are 17 should be embarrassing, otherwise you are way too cool.

Music became my focus. At 13, I was jamming with my mates. At 15, I was playing clubs.

When I heard Elvis and his 'Sun Sessions,' I went mad for it. I was about thirteen.

I still love it. I love lots of other music, too, and always have, but punk's the soundtrack of my youth. I think you never escape the music you're listening to and seeing when you're seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old.

In high school, I had a wonderful teacher who, coincidentally also taught Meryl Streep before me. At the same time I had my own rock band, I played bass and sang. I was one of those kids who really enjoyed being with my friends and doing rather insane, but fun, creative things.

When Paul and I were first friends, starting in the sixth grade and seventh grade, we would sing a little together and we would make up radio shows and become disc jockeys on our home wire recorder. And then came rock and roll.

I love jazz and pop rock and country. I grew up listening to Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Def Leppard, AC/DC, Anne Murray - if I hear something really great... I want to be a part of it.

It's interesting to do other people's music - that's how I learned to play, by learning other people's songs. It's nice to delve into how other people got to where they are.

Usually, I think you have most of your musical influences locked down by the time you're 16.

I think that the best rock n' roll is about the spirit of being young, the feeling of being 16 and getting crazy with your friends and going out to a show and just that whole feeling.

When we were 15, my brother and I were getting really into Nirvana, Green Day, and The Beastie Boys. We started going to shows and realized we really wanted to be on stage.

Part of the joy of music is listening to lots of different kinds of music and learning from it. Specifically for me, I like writing songs that move me, and what moves me are beautiful songs on the piano or the guitar and really, really heavy music.

My high school years were exactly like 'Superbad.'

When I was growing up, Green Day had just come out.

One of the things that the Grateful Dead did, way back when, was we spent a lot of time just turning each other on to music. If somebody was listening to something that really caught their ear, they'd make sure that everybody else in the band heard it, and that came home for us in innumerable ways.

I wasn't good in school. I didn't do sports. I sat in the bedroom and listened to records. Because the Beatles did whatever they wanted to, I took that as a kid and said, 'That's what rock is.'

Probably from, like, 10 to 14 or 15, I would just listen to pop radio.

I kind of idolized older punk-rock and hip-hop bands, and I was, like, 15 when I started the Beastie Boys. And what business did we having doing that at that age?

In high school, I would secretly play Joni Mitchell songs all the time. That's when I started singing and playing at the same time, and I got really into doing that.

I was pretty much into punk rock and that's all I cared about. I was into Green Day and the Ramones. I wanted to get a guitar so I could play punk songs because this kid taught me power chords at summer camp.

Green Day were heroes of mine growing up.

I remember Green Day came down and played this South Florida club called the Plus Five. I think I was too young to go - I think I was 12 or 13. It was before Green Day were on a major label, but I loved them because they were this band who were a punk band, but they had melody.