Jeff Ament Quotes

I was into the Ramones, Bad Brains, all of that, when I was in high school.

We were just a bunch of high school kids who got into the Ramones together.

I went to UC Berkeley for college, and it was during the period when the whole punk movement was happening.

When I was in high school, I remember, on my Converse sneakers, on one side, I had written 'Social Distortion,' and on the other side, I had written 'Guns N' Roses.'

When you come from an immigrant home, you're in a whole different world until you leave your house. In my teenage years, I had to learn to switch cultures the second I left my house and, when I came back, to go back to my fundamentals.

I was pretty much into punk rock and that's all I cared about. I was into Green Day and the Ramones. I wanted to get a guitar so I could play punk songs because this kid taught me power chords at summer camp.

When the punk rock thing happened, I thought, 'Right, I have one chance here to be seen as part of some wider social phenomenon.'

To be involved in the subculture of punk rock puts you in a minority.

I moved to Naples, Florida, and by 15 I was into punk: Green Day, Rancid, NOFX, Operation Ivy. Along with the classic punk bands, like the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Misfits, Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat - all those bands that you get into when you're first getting into punk.

Back in the day, I was definitely a child of alternative radio.

I was a DJ in college and had my own punk music-focused show all four years.

Everybody else was quoting 2Pac, and I was running around with Green Day in my Walkman. Racially speaking, I wasn't cool or appropriate for any group.

When I was in college, I wasn't in a fraternity or anything. I always wanted to jump around to all different types of cliques.

When I got into high school, clarinet was not really in fashion. Everybody had electric bands.

I grew up on rock and roll like My Chemical Romance, who were actually genuinely talking about and saying things.

For years, young adults have adopted extremely liberal world views in their attempts to be different, ultimately failing to see the irony that they've all become the same.

A lot of punk rock. I listen to various stuff just cuz my friends now listen to a lot of different bands. I listen to a lot of underground stuff like jungle music.

If you're 30, 40 years old, you're not getting listened to by minors. Like, Jay Z has some of the sickest lyrics ever, but I would never buy his CD, just because of my age and because of his age.

To produce that identity among young people required guinea pigs.

I listen to a lot of music that teenagers are listening to because I'm around them.

Youth is the time of life lived for some imaginary audience.

I have a 14 year old daughter now. You know, it was that time in these kids lives when these girls are becoming women and the hormones are raging. They didn't know if The Beatles were any good, they just went for it 'cause The Beatles were attractive.

The 1970s was probably the most exciting decade to be a teenager, from discovering Little Richard at the end of the 1960s to glam rock to punk rock to electro music. So much happened in that 10-year span. There were so many musical revolutions. Some were happening at the same time. You had disco going on behind punk. You had Michael Jackson. You had the Sex Pistols.

Academics were not a challenge when I was fifteen in college. The challenge was figuring out how to fit in socially.

The idea of social performance, that we're always performing identities, is something I got fairly obsessed with. I think it's probably because I am a person who went to 15 different elementary and middle schools. I moved all the time, often having to run out in the middle of the night because my mom couldn't pay the bills. There were schools where I'd be the poor loser kid. There were schools where I'd suddenly be the smart kid or the cool kid, although that was very seldom.