Frank Iero Quotes

Punk was originally about creating new, important, energetic music that would hopefully threaten the status quo and the stupidity of the 1970s.

Punk is not really a style of music. It was more like a state of mind.

Punk was sort of an angry stance against things that had happened just before, against the pop of glam rock, against progressive rock. Music had become very staid and it was about the playing and people obsessed. Eric Clapton was God and we needed an enema within the art form, and punk did do that.

Punk rock seemed to make sense. I was listening to The Clash and I really loved their social messages and they have a great history of fighting racism.

Punk was more based on social change than on music, so it didn't bother me too much. It wasn't really a musical threat.

I grew up on misogynist, devil-worshipping heavy metal music, and then it was groups like The Clash and Public Enemy that reminded me that there were a different set of ideas that could be expressed with great music.

When things socially and politically get difficult, punk music suddenly comes back again, and there's just a really healthy pivot away from music that's not humanly understandable.

Punk rock will never die, until something more dangerous replaces it.

'Punk rock' is a word used by dilettantes and heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies, the bodies, the hearts, the souls, the time and the minds of young men who give everything they have to it.

My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die.

I do fear for the generations of people who came of age thinking that pop-punk is what punk is, and that all the rebellion you need is just to stick your tongue out in the mirror every once in a while.

Punk rock really came out of N.Y. as a philosophy before the groups were ever recorded. I had a kind-of intellectual interest in the idea of creating a new scene that could be a grassroots thing.

Punk was defined by an attitude rather than a musical style.

My entire life, socially, was all around the Maggie era. That was the great challenge as a Sex Pistol was how to deal with Margaret Thatcher. I think we did rather good.

I was raised on Nirvana and flannel shirts and Rage Against the Machine, and I sort of describe my youth as rebellious and always fighting the system.

The Clash had a unique, special relationship with Scotland. Perhaps it was something to do with the energy, anger and beauty in their music. In Scotland at that time, there was a lot of to be angry about. And a great need of some energy and beauty.

I'm a punk rocker. I don't do Christian.

I would say there's a lot of similarity between folk and punk. It's written for the common man.

Punk is not just the sound, the music. Punk is a lifestyle.

I think punk rock, especially for me, was a big middle finger to this whole talent thing.

I have Nineties music oozing out of my pores. What made rock & roll back then is that it was uncensored. It was raw and dark. Think of 'Something in the Way,' by Nirvana - he was telling everyone how he felt.

We take a lot of inspiration from punk rock and early rock 'n' roll from the '50s and early '60s.

The only person out there worthy of mixing political views and music is Jello Biafra.

All punk music is is rebellion, going against the grain. It takes different forms. Sometimes it's a band throwing their instruments around or making really violent and noisy sounds, but it doesn't have to take that sonic form. It can take more of an energy.

I remember being really young - being 13 or 14 - when I first was really excited about punk rock as an idea, and I was like, 'Don't ever not be punk. Don't ever not be punk.' Telling that to myself, I guess it was like self-defense against the scary world around me.