Joel Madden Quotes

'Nevermind' by Nirvana. That was a big one for me.

I started wearing all black around the time I got into Nirvana. I first heard 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' when I was about 12, and I remember jumping on my bed, so excited about it.

That was a time when I did love music, I couldn't get enough of what was going on. Maybe it was Nirvana that brought me back. I guess it was a comfort because something that sounded so right - and non-commercial - had become so influential, so immediately.

I was born in '76, but I didn't get into rock until the early '90s when the grunge stuff started coming out.

I like the guitar-driven music of Nirvana at its peak. At that point, I thought there was a lot of really exciting music coming out.

Nirvana was like that- Nirvana was like the only band to come out of that- it was like the same thing, Seattle was like this whole scene and it was like this big scene that was thrust upon America.

I'm the mold that grunge was grown in.

Doolittle was a major influence on the Seattle grunge scene, which emerged in the early 1990s.

Nirvana was happening when I was 14, kind of the perfect age. Growing up in Anacortes, Washington, it was close enough to Seattle that it seemed like a local thing.

When 'Nevermind' came out, my roommate had the CD. At first, I actually thought, 'This is too polished and commercial.' It was a little off-putting. But then I was like, 'This is the best music ever.' It felt so close to what I wanted to do.

I love '90s grunge and punk.

I absolutely think the Seattle grunge sound was instrumental to my music education.

I've always gravitated towards those ultimate lines in songs, the line you grab on to. That line in 'Smells Like Teen Spirit,' 'Here we are now/Entertain us' - the irony, the antagonism; that's always stuck with me.

I grew up in the '90s, and I loved Nirvana.

From the time that 'Nevermind' came out in September of 1991 to the time that Nirvana was over, it was really just a few years, and a lot happened in those few years.

And if I'm honest about it, I was obsessed with Nirvana and Pearl Jam. This is like '92, right in the throes of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam and Nirvana. I think I probably wanted to be Kurt Cobain.

I was big into grunge, like Nirvana and Hole, when I was younger, which has been a really huge inspiration because of its rawness and honesty.

I don't really like Nirvana that much.

A lot of what attracted people to Nirvana was that they were like the people you went to high school with.

This is my own little rock theory: In my mind, Nirvana slayed the hair bands. They shot the top off the poodles.

Fifth grade was when I first heard 'Smells Like Teen Spirit;' it was the energy, and his voice. I liked 311 and Sublime, too, though that might have been a little after that.

I'll never forget getting my first Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chain records, and hearing that wonderful, beautiful darkness. And the rhythmic intensity, that's what attracted me more than anything else.

Nirvana was a band that led you somewhere, as opposed to all the grunge bands that began and ended with themselves.

I used to love Kurt Cobain, when he was telling people we're a pop band. People would laugh, they thought of it as good old ironic Kurt. But he wasn't being ironic.

I seriously do not think Nirvana is grunge.