A Quote by Billy Squier

British rock & roll became the gospel for American kids like me.

Billy Squier

Quote Topics

American American Kids Became British Gospel Kids Like Like Me Me Rock Roll

Quote Author

Billy Squier
American - Musician
Born: May 12, 1950

I was born in 1963. So the '70s were my teenage years. As a teenager, I was into rock and roll - Bowie, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, even more progressive music like Genesis, and I was into a lot of British rock and roll. But I loved also American rock and roll. CCR, Jimmie Hendrix, The Doors, Patty Smith, and Bob Dylan.

Jean-Marc Vallee

No matter what though, there's always rock & roll. There's rock 'n' roll in hip-hop, there's rock & roll in pop music, there's rock 'n' roll in soul, there's rock 'n' roll in country. When you see people dress and their style has an edge to it, that rebellious edge that bubbles up in every genre, that's rock & roll. Everybody still wants to be a rock star.

John Varvatos

Good rock 'n' roll is something that makes you feel alive. It's something that's human, and I think that most music today isn't. ... To me good rock 'n' roll also encompasses other things, like Hank Williams and Charlie Mingus and a lot of things that aren't strictly defined as rock 'n' roll. Rock 'n' roll is an attitude, it's not a musical form of a strict sort. It's a way of doing things, of approaching things. Writing can be rock 'n' roll, or a movie can be rock 'n' roll. It's a way of living your life.

Lester Bangs

There's rock n' roll in hip-hop, there's rock n' roll in pop music, there's rock n' roll in soul, there's rock n' roll in country. When you see people dress, and their style has an edge to it, that rebellious edge that bubbles up in every genre, that's rock n' roll. Everybody still wants to be a rock star, you know?

John Varvatos

I have absolutely no interest in rock and roll. I'm just being David Bowie. Mick Jagger is rock and roll. I mean, I go out and my music is roughly the format of rock and roll, I use the chord changes of rock and roll, but I don't feel I'm a rock and roll artist. I'd be a terrible rock artist, absolutely ghastly.

David Bowie

I wanna show that gospel, country, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, rock 'n' roll are all just really one thing. Those are the American music and that is the American culture.

Etta James

Rock 'n' roll was uniting black kids and white kids, and rock 'n' roll is not being given credit... for being just as important to the civil rights movement as the activists.

Daryl Davis

Rock n' roll was one thing, and then they chopped off the 'roll' and called it 'rock,' which became a sort of umbrella term for anything with a guitar in it. Like hair bands. How could we possibly believe that? It's just gotten downright silly, to the point where now it's sort of become like professional wrestling.

Tom Petty

Rock n' Roll came from the slaves singing gospel in the fields. Their lives were hell and they used music to lift out of it, to take them away. That's what rock n' roll should do - take you to a better place.

Meat Loaf

I was always drawn to gospel music and the roots of African-American music. It's the foundation of rock and roll.

Hozier

Rock and roll is not an instrument. Rock and roll isn't even a style of music. Rock and roll is a spirit that's been going since the blues, jazz, bebop, soul, R&B, heavy metal, punk rock and, yes, hip-hop.

MC Ren

We really wanted to be rock 'n' roll, so we became rock 'n' roll, and really good at it, but you pick up loads of layers and you completely forget who you are and what you are.

Shaun Ryder

Originally, what we call rock 'n' roll was nothing more than an attempt of very bad white performers to sound like black rhythm-and-blues performers. They did their best to emulate, they did their best to paraphrase. And that started what later became rock 'n' roll.

Frank Sinatra Jr.

I don't know that there's a division between American and British, European, South American, Asian sensibilities when it comes to rock n' roll or, really, any form of music. Songs travel, and people take them into their lives in all different kinds of unpredictable and really untraceable ways.

Greil Marcus

Sam Cooke was a gospel singer like myself, and when he crossed over and started singing rock n' roll, it kind of gave me the green light to go ahead and do it.