A Quote by Michael Stipe
Punk-rock records came out and you bought whatever you could find. But Devo didn't happen for another three years. Sex Pistols didn't tour the States until '78. At that time, for me, it was really about CBGB, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, the Ramones, and Television.
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DEVO was like the punk band that non Punk America saw as Punk and so when people who were really into Punk rock would be walking around on the streets the jocks who learned about Punk through Devo would roll down their windows and yell at the Punks: 'HEY, DEVO!!'
I don't think that the punk sound really became the punk sound until much later. The punk era wasn't really just one musical sound. There are a lot of differences among Television, the Ramones, and the Talking Heads.
When punk began to be a genre, people were going to go out and try to mine it. Some of the better groups, like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, were very artificial.
Rick Nielsen, Angus Young. Huge Eddie Van Halen fan when I was younger. Jimmy Page is an enormous one who impacts me. When you grow up with classic rock like that and then you get into punk rock, you defy your roots and where you came from. I never really went through that. Even when I started listening to the Clash or the Sex Pistols, I still always listened to Led Zeppelin or Kiss.
It seems like the powers that be are really trying to separate everything and really divide the genres and divide the trends. If you're metal and you don't sound like Slayer would sound now, then you're not metal. If you're punk rock and you don't sound like and preach about what The Sex Pistols would have preached about back in the day, then you're not really punk rock.
I do - very specifically, I remember Bessie Smith; I used to collect 78 records that I would buy from the St Vincent de Paul store at five cents apiece, and I did this indiscriminately. I would just take whatever was there. And I listened to Patti Page and Walter Huston, 'September Song.'
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.
Over four or five years, I did six albums with three people: John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, and Patti Smith. I felt that if I could care as much about their music as they did, I could be useful to them. I really cared about their music and their lives.
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.
I guess, for me, what started me getting real excited about music was the New York punk and new-wave scene. All those bands looked back to the Velvet Underground and the Stooges and the Modern Lovers as well. But that was back when Television were punk, and the Talking Heads were punk.
The Sex Pistols came through Atlanta, and I got to go see them. That was historic. It blew me away; it was so much fun. I bought 45s of bands you don't hear about anymore.
I mean, you can't have sex until you're married if you're Mormon. The first time I had sex, my parents found out. They were listening in on the phone while I was talking about sex to my girlfriend. They freaked out, man. They both cornered me in my bedroom.
Then the early punk rock period with Television and the Ramones. That's what I loved- that's what I was listening to immediately prior to when I started to play.
[Columbia House] magazines were how I found out about the punk world going on in New York. Because of what I read, at the age of 15, I hounded the local record store to order a copy of Horses [1975] for me by Patti Smith.
There were a lot of people doing new and interesting things with rock. But I wanted to take it farther than that. My real influence was punk. I must have listened to the first Patti Smith album 300 times.
The whole point was just to be yourself, no matter what that was. You didn't have to fit into a certain punk-rock cliché. Create whatever your compelled to create. People were putting out their own records, and it just seemed natural to put out my own magazine. When I was really young, I started making magazines and little books, just folded-over pieces of typing paper, so when I discovered punk rock, it really blew my mind. I played in bands and stuff, but making my own zines seemed like an inherent part of that scene.
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