Patti Smith Quotes

I don't think there's any such thing as rock n' roll anymore - it's an amalgamation of business interests.

We're not ignored by The Guinness Book Of Records, but we've been largely ignored by the media during our lifetime. If you read any article, no mention is ever made of Pink Floyd. We're never included in the same sentences as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who. I wrote 'The Wall' as an attack on stadium rock - and there's Pink Floyd making money out of it by playing it in stadiums! Pathetic. They spoiled my creations.

Nowadays, [young musicians] are so quick to be like, "OK, fine, I'll take the cheque, or I'll get the stamp from XYZ, and I'm expanding my brand," rather than thinking, "I'm part of this space over here, and in order for it to grow, you can't have it assimilated by this bigger bubble or corporate brand."

I suppose the biggest change to me is this kind of very oversexualizing of everything. Not that anyone wants to take the sex out of rock 'n' roll, you know - that would be ludicrous - but it seems that everything now, it's like the sexuality is the only voice; everything else is gone.

I think it's important that all 50 years of rock 'n' roll live in the same place, because it's all connected.

Rock 'n' roll started to make so much money and generated so much income for the record companies that suddenly it was no longer evil.

What really is wild about rock 'n' roll? Nothing. It's so banal and so part of corporate culture. It threatens to lose all its life.

Christmas garland and a rock?" he said, a smile in his voice."Why not an ornament?" "Wolves aren't fragile," I told him. "And they're... stubbon and hard to move

Even the indie rock world - which is supposed to be about truth and independence from corporate mindfulness or something - is totally subject to the paraphernalia of celebrity.

Can we move this along?" a bored voice stated. "I have places to be and people to shag." "Ian, I'm not going to hug you," I stated as I approached him. "I know you like this better." With that, I slapped him hard enough to rock his head to the side. When he'd straightened, he flashed me a wicked grin. "Finally, you give me what I want. Knew you loved me, Reaper.

It's much too late to do anything about rock & roll now.

Why the critics, like a flock of ducks, always move in perfect unison: Their authority with the public depends upon an appearance of unanimous agreement. One dissenting voice would shatter the whole fragile structure.

Poetry is a river; many voices travel in it; poem after poem moves along in the exciting crests and falls of the river waves. None is timeless; each arrives in an historical context; almost everything, in the end, passes. But the desire to make a poem, and the world's willingness to receive it--indeed the world's need of it--these never pass.

Rock and roll seems to have had a mellowing in the business where it got harder to sell individual records and make money doing that.

For me, when you get to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, there's a side of me that goes, "What does that mean? Are you still relevant after that? Do they put you on the shelf along with the award?" I don't know, but that's the last thing we wanted.

Now the old boy may be barely breathing, but the heart of rock and roll is still beating.

If a poem is written well, it was written with the poet's voice and for a voice. Reading a poem silently instead of saying a poem is like the difference between staring at sheet music and actually humming or playing the music on an instrument.

Moving to London was a culture shock, but in a really good way. I'm more aware now, and I'm less trusting of people in the music industry.

Everything has become so pop-rock oriented that finding a role for a soprano, and finding an audience for a soprano, is tricky. Unless you're dealing with a revival, which is why I do so many revivals - because my specific tone and vocal quality lends itself to that type of writing.

When you hear the melodic structures of what classical musicians put together and you compare it to that of a rock & roll record, there's a hell of a long way rock & roll has to go.

I think most people start rock bands in their early twenties or teens, but I was almost thirty at the time when the band started really doing anything and it took another several years before people started caring about us.

I don't know if rock is dying. I wouldn't want to say that, but the world does change. Nothing stays the same.

My music was too religious for the rock and roll stores and too rock and roll for the religious stores.

When I started Rolling Stone in November 1967, the magazine's initial chapter was to cover rock & roll music with intelligence and respect. Even then, we knew that the fervor sweeping our generation encompassed more than just music.