I got hooked into folk music by accident, because that's what white college kids liked when I was a child.
I was the only punk rocker at my high school. And there were at least a handful of black kids who liked hip-hop. Both were kind of the new music of the day, and it was lonely being the only punk.
Hanson has rapid female fans, which I'm completely proud of, but a lot of fans are a contingent that have grown up with us really - our peers. There's younger fans. More and more guys are Hanson fans, musicians or kind of guys who were into a Beatles record.
Who were the biggest acts in the world in 1987? Guns N' Roses and Metallica. I shamelessly pandered to surfers and skateboarders, and in pictures from then, you'll see Slash and those guys wearing N.W.A stuff. If they thought it was cool, people in Kansas and Wyoming would buy it. That's how we broached the subject.
I listen to all kinds of music. I love underground, new music that's popping.
For a long time the people at my shows were sort of the Pantera-tattoo trucker guys, really cool dudes, but I don't know what happened to them. That's the crowd that I like, the ones that don't get so offended just to be offended.
All that stuff about heavy metal and hard rock, I don't subscribe to any of that. It's all just music. I mean, the heavy metal from the '70s sounds nothing like the stuff from the '80s, and that sounds nothing like the stuff from the '90s. Who's to say what is and isn't a certain type of music?
I would love to hear Marilyn Manson's fans or something, what their stories would be like.
When Phil and I started out, everyone hated rock n' roll. The record companies didn't like it at all - felt it was an unnecessary evil. And the press: interviewers were always older than us, and they let you know they didn't like your music, they were just doing the interview because it was their job.
It was the glitter days, and the New York Dolls and Kiss would come play at the Coventry, all those bands would come in from Manhattan.
When I was young, people were almost identified solely by the kind of music they liked. People fell into categories of who liked what.
Every once in a while, we have some sort of movement in music that everyone suddenly wants to work in, like grunge or rap or disco or some other musical phase, and then suddenly, that'll be the thing to do.
When I came up in a band - not just in a band, but a kind of underground DIY community - there was such a clear cut distinction between what pop was and what not pop was in very simplistic terms.
I've always been very image prone, along the lines of bands like Black Sabbath and even Devo.
Not many people bought Velvet Underground LPs, but those who did, started a band.
The people who listened to rock 'n' roll, I thought, were bound together against the people who didn't listen to rock 'n' roll. That, of course, didn't work at all. Your taste in rock 'n' roll does not say anything about you, morally or otherwise.
Growing up in the suburbs, I used to listen to punk rock, Brand New, Taking Back Sunday. And no one from my high school listened to it.
The word we have in Korea for K-Pop is 'Gaio.' And I guess it's a huge umbrella term. Basically it's like saying Coldplay and Kanye West, or Eminem and Celine Dion, are the same genre.
In the U.K. especially, dance music goes in cycles. It's often kids reappropriating sounds they loved when they were younger, but were too young to be a part of.
I think youth will always be connected to the strongest music at the time because... I don't want to use the word 'tribal,' but there was this sort of familial affiliation that people would feel with the music they were listening to.
I believe in rock and roll and heavy music in general.
I know Diplo knows a lot about underground music culture - he was one of the people to put me onto music like that when I used to listen to the Mad Decent Mixes. It was like, 'Oh, he knows what I want.'
Music, Rock and Roll music especially, is such a generational thing. Each generation must have their own music, I had my own in my generation, you have yours, everyone I know has their own generation.
Music, for me, is as important as fashion. The first visuals I remember are Elvis Presley, David Bowie, New Romantics, and different punk bands.
We don't feel like we changed from rave, because we were never rave, to punk, because we're not punk.
