A Quote by Lights

I've always gravitated naturally towards a little bit of a heavier thing, having been in punk bands and metal bands before I ever got into pop. — © Lights
I've always gravitated naturally towards a little bit of a heavier thing, having been in punk bands and metal bands before I ever got into pop.
I hated it so much as a child. I just didn't like it when punk bands went metal, it really bothered me. It was happening left and right in the 1980s. It started I think with D.C. bands - G.I., Soul Side, they went metal. Right at that time, R.E.M. was coming out, these more kinda feminine bands, and I was more drawn to that than to go metal. And you remember MTV, with the bad metal. But even Metallica, it just wasn't my direction.
I was in punk rock bands, heavy metal bands, world music bands, jazz groups, any type of music that would take me. I just love music.
Imagine a music business where all the music press talked about, all day long, was cover bands of old rock and pop groups. Beatles cover bands, Rolling Stones cover bands, The Who cover bands, Led Zeppelin cover bands. Cover bands, cover bands, everywhere you go.
When I joined the band, I hadn't been introduced to a lot of these bands on the scene - no emo bands or punk bands. The only band I knew was My Chemical Romance.
Punk rock and metal has always been a home to me, it's where I cut my teeth; and those are the friends that I have, and the bands that I love.
I've always been a fan first and foremost - obsessing over bands and seeking out bands, and spending hours and hours listening. When I played music, the scope of my fandom became more myopic; I was focusing on the bands we were touring with, or the bands on the label. And you're always positing yourself in relation to other bands. Since I haven't been playing, I feel a little less cynical. I'm able to seek out music and approach it strictly as a fan.
Punk rock really influenced me, the basic metal bands, Zeppelin, Stones and Floyd, and Southern rock bands. I think I was pretty well-rounded.
When you look at bands like Take That, who have come back bigger than ever, you can see there will always be a market for good pop bands.
In the 80s there weren't so many bands around and nowadays there are a lot more bands around. I think sometimes there are too many bands. But there are a lot of interesting young bands around. They are not really playing the classic metal stuff, that's up to the old bands.
I was in bands, but they were punk bands, and you plug in the guitars, you turn them up really loud, you've got four or five other people on stage with you, you've got some protection from when they throw lighters. You can always hide behind the lead singer or the bass player.
That's why I think it hurt us, whereas these other bands [I'm assuming he means the other Big 3 -Slayer, Megadeth, Metallica] they kept doing their thing, just METAL. METAL. METAL. METAL. We didn't do that, we took a little but of a turn.
When I first got involved in the underground metal scene in '82, '83, there were only about five or six major Death or Black Metal bands around. There were so many other bands that were inspirational, that really helped.
There's this wave of new pop-punk bands that has come out that's bigger than ever. I'm really glad that we got to be a part of helping push that forward, if we did at all. I wouldn't have had it any other way.
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.
There's a time and a place for a bit of realism, and it's bands like Arctic Monkeys that do it amazingly well. But why do bands have to recycle something that's already been done very well? We wanted to make interesting pop music, and to drop in literary references.
I do love dance music. I love Daft Punk. I mean, I was a child in the '80s, so bands like the Eurythmics and just so many great '80s bands were dance bands, but they had the whole soul thing happening, too.
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