Greil Marcus Quotes

There are lots of Joy Division songs that are so powerful when played live, some of which we did either never play or played very rarely.

Over the years, Joy Division has become a huge part of music culture.

What is remarkable about Joy Division is the way they are bereft of two of the mainstays of most other rock and pop: longing and supplication.

I started listening to the Cure around the time I discovered Joy Division and, like Joy Division, they have shaped my taste in all sorts of dark and dreary ways.

I look back on Joy Division very fondly indeed. I know that, of course, the band came to a tragic end, but that does not change the fact that Joy Division was a great band to be a part of.

I read one too many books about Joy Division by people who weren't there, and they always seem to dwell on the dark, the intense, the miserable image of Joy Division.

I was very into New Order, Joy Division, all of that when I was younger. I had a lot of bootlegs that I saved up my pocket money to buy. I had all the obscure early EPs.

'Movement' sounded like Joy Division, but 'Power, Corruption & Lies' is the first New Order record.

The reason Joy Division and New Order are as influential and successful as they are is because of the unique playing of all the individuals.

Factory Records would not have existed and my life would not have been what it was without Joy Division.

Joy Division sounded like Manchester: cold, sparse and, at times, bleak.

I'm very proud of New Order and Joy Division, that heritage of songs.

We didn't play any Joy Division songs for 10 years after the start of New Order, which was a very honourable thing to do even if it meant shooting ourselves in the foot.

My favorite band is probably The Cure. We can throw Talking Heads in there too, I listen to them a lot. But The Cure.

When The Fall pummeled their way into my nervous system, circa 1983, it was as if a world that was familiar - and which I had thought too familiar, too quotidian to feature in rock - had returned, expressionistically transfigured, permanently altered.

It's funny: when I started playing bass in 1984, you had guys like Paul Simonon fron the Clash, John Paul Jones, Lemmy, and Nikki Sixx was the head guy in Motley Crue, and you had all this post-punk stuff like Magazine and Killing Joke where the bass sort of lead the way. Not that I picked it to sort of be a main dude, but it intrigued me.

Ian Curtis was a young genius.

The lion's share of what I listened to in the Eighties, what really affected me, was coming from Britain.

I mean, you could have said Elvis Presley was new wave when it happened. I heard Willy DeVille and Tom Petty and to me they were new wave really because they were new.

When I started out as a music journalist, at the end of the 1980s, it was generally assumed that we were living through the lamest music era the world would ever see. But those were also the years when hip-hop exploded, beatbox disco soared, indie rock took off, and new wave invented a language of teen angst.

I started making music with my band in the '80s, so I am more product of post punk than classical music, and I have always carried on this way.

Hearing things like 'Wake Up' by Lora Logic, or the Raincoats' 'In Love' - that was something I wasn't prepared for. I couldn't hear anything that came before it in the music, and I didn't want to. I was absolutely in love with its out-of-nowhereness.

When the Beatles cut old rock n' roll, they were recording music still in their performing repertoire, and besides, they never thought of the music as old.

Rock never meant the same thing to everyone, but when I was growing up in the late seventies, everyone could identify the five, ten bands that formed the center.

I'm a huge fan of Billy Idol. I spiked my hair every day like him in 7th and 8th grade.