Jo Stafford Quotes

The music I used to make was a lot more rock, so I come from this background of head banging a lot, and it took me a while to figure out how to do it in the context of our music.

I feel like Nashville has really embraced me with open arms. I was a little worried at first; you know, everybody knows about my immediate past, which is rock music. But everyone is coming to find out that I've been singing country music my whole life.

I really consider myself fortunate to have been of age during the musical revolution that came in the form of the Beatles. People don't realize that previous to the Beatles, there really was no such thing as an album artist. People made singles. Then they would put a bunch of those singles together and call it an album. And that was it.

In between 15 and 20 - probably at around 17 - my interests switched from hard rock to punk rock. And then by 20 they were circling out of punk rock back into Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, the stuff that I didn't get to when I was younger.

Hard rock will always be hard rock, but you don't really know what is rock - and what isn't - anymore. I don't consider a lot of the pop things I hear on the radio to be rock n' roll. It's just kind of fragmented.

I think music changes and it evolves.

I was born at the beginning of rock and roll. I got to experience the entire evolution of popular rock and roll music even before it started.

I remember Mitch Miller saying every week, This rock and roll stuff will never last. But one doesn't like to bring that up to Mitch.

When I grew up, there was one music: rock n' roll. Somewhere along the line, there was a separation. I don't know why it happened, but it did happen.

Anyway, you know, when Richard Meltzer said rock and roll died in '68, what he means is Jefferson Airplane were no longer his buddies, that's what he really means. He means it in a political way: that was when the artists and the audience found themselves on different levels.

Me, who's educated classically, I went toward rock music 'cause it was sort of a natural evolution from where I was playing with my brother. But I was always drawn back into classical music.

If you actually go back and listen to my first album, there are some things on there that are kind of rock 'n' roll.

Music needs to move forward.

When the fad changed from folk to rock, they didn't take along any good writers.

I'd studied piano first and switched over to cello when I was about seven. I played mostly chamber and solo classical music. I got really involved with rock music when I was a teenager. I wired up my cello.

If you want to put your rock 'n' roll into mythology, [A Period of Transition] is from the Daddy Cool school.

But somehow I feel the world is taking me away from my original rock roots of inspiration. Rock and roll is losing its past glory.

Rock music is a funny thing: You can actually take it too far sometimes, and then it's not rock music anymore - it's something else, but it's not rock.

I did alternative rock before. That's why my style is the way it is now.

I think rock 'n' roll, in a way, has been dead for a long time.

I started out in rock, but I didn't want to stay there, and haven't.

My mum and dad used to listen to a lot of R&B and soul, so this was the way I grew up. Hip-hop, of course. But then as I grew older, I started listening to everything.

We started the band when I was about 19 or 20. At that age, it would have been kind of hard to imagine a lot of the stuff that I've written. We were playing garage rock. I wanted to dash out three chords and scream. But if you do that for 20 years, what's the point?

I always say to people that I left hip-hop in '97, meaning that I departed from listening to predominately hip-hop and just started really getting into records from the late '60s, early '70s. And once I made that change, I realized how much great music was made back in the day, and it started to become apparent how much we've lost in music.

Whether you like punk, grunge, or early rock and roll, there's probably something in there you've been living with your whole life and you didn't even know it was jazz.