Personally I feel that real rock 'n' roll may be on the way out, just like adolescence as a relatively innocent transitional period is on the way out. What we have instead is a small island of new free music surrounded by some good reworkings of past idioms and a vast sargasso sea of absolute garbage.

The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious.

Rock'n'roll is an attitude, it's not a musical form of a strict sort. It's 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.

The whole point of American culture is to pick up any old piece of trash and make it shine with more facets than the Hope Diamond.

I'm really schizophrenic about that, because on the one hand I would say, yes there is, there's something inherently, even violent about it, it's wild and raw and all this.

. . . rock and roll, as I see it, is the ultimate populist art form, democracy in action, because it's true: anybody can do it.

I mean the interesting thing I think would be if something happened like, what happened in England where all these kids that all of a sudden can't afford the ticket prices.