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" Courtney Love is so famous among journalists for her loquaciousness that the joke is that you don't have to worry about questions when you interview her - just be sure you have lots of tape. "

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" John Cougar Mellencamp - I didn't like him in the beginning. I liked some of the stuff around the 'Scarecrow' period. I go back and forth on him all the time, but I think he's a good artist. I don't know if he's a great artist or not, but he rose above his original level of achievement. "

Robert Hilburn

Good

Achievement

Great

" It's a hard thing to be an artist and not give up. "

Robert Hilburn

Give

Thing

" I don't understand why people take Beyonce so seriously. You don't feel like there's a living, breathing person. It's not flesh and blood. It's just flesh and flesh. "

" When the Eagles were starting out in the early '70s, it would have been hard to imagine anyone in the fledgling, country-accented rock group someday seriously challenging the artistic punch of Neil Young or Joni Mitchell. "

" Even though The Cure helped pioneer the jangly, dance-oriented guitar and keyboard style it continues to embrace, there are other bands that now employ the post-punk style with greater flair. This leaves The Cure's live presentation seeming a bit anonymous. "

" I think there's a lot of writers who took rock music more seriously: Greil Marcus, Jon Landau. "

Robert Hilburn

Think

Music

" I really thought I knew Johnny Cash. I thought I didn't need to spend a lot of time researching his life. But I wasn't within 50 miles of knowing Johnny Cash. I knew he was a good guy and a dedicated artist, but I didn't know the demons, the struggles he had in his personal life. "

" I was getting calls in 1970 from teenagers, little girls, and they'd say, 'Oh, I like your stories about so-and-so so much. How old are you? 20?' 'No. Older than that.' '30?' 'No. Older than that.' And they'd hang up. "

" David Bowie, who spent most of the '70s establishing himself as a master of psychological disguises, is spending the '80s trying to convince us that he's just a regular fella - or at least as close to one as a millionaire pop star can be. "

" Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie and The Sex Pistols may come and go, but rebellion remains a key part of the rock n' roll experience. However, that rebellion - the outgrowth of a youthful search for independence and identity - doesn't always take the same form. "

" The first time I saw Pearl Jam, I thought Eddie Vedder had seen too many Jim Morrison videos, and I didn't like the music very much. But by the third album, I really liked them after all. "

" I didn't know if I should tell people that Johnny Cash had an affair with his sister-in-law while his wife was pregnant. How much does the public need to know about a performer? "

" The Cure is clearly above average but seemingly unable to rally itself to move to a higher plateau. "

" Without people like Dylan and the Beatles and people like Paul Simon, I think rock n' roll would have died out like Dixieland jazz. "

Robert Hilburn

Without

Jazz

" Take any celebrity - all we really know is what they choose to tell us or what they show us in public. "

Robert Hilburn

Choose

Know

" At the 'L.A. Times,' I always wanted to write about artists I thought were meaningful. So I interviewed Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Eminem, White Stripes. And I could understand how almost everybody I interviewed had a sense of artistry. "

" Some people will never take Madonna seriously - just as many never took Marilyn Monroe seriously. Novelty images - especially that of a sex symbol - are hard to erase. "

" I first met Michael in the early days of the Jackson 5 at the family home in Los Angeles, and the memory that stands out is that Michael, as cute and wide-eyed as an 11-year-old could be, was eager to get through the interview so he could watch cartoons before having to go to bed. "

" The way he tells it, George Michael was born to be a pop star. It's as if nothing else really mattered during his childhood. Even the name was part of the pop creation. "

" It's important to realize that everybody who went into country music, and most everybody who went into rock and roll in the '50s, they had no more goal than a hit on the jukebox. Johnny Cash, from the very beginning, had a goal that he wanted to make music that lifted people's spirits. "

" I don't want to be the cranky old guy, but a lot of critics are too forgiving of mediocre artists. When you see these 'American Idol' people on the cover of 'Rolling Stone' being written about as serious artists, there's something wrong with that. You can erase them from the history of rock n' roll, and you wouldn't notice. "

" When I was in high school in the '50s, all pop music - Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard - was aimed at teenagers. I loved that stuff. "

" There's not a great danger in releasing the first single from an album without a video because the momentum from the last album will cause large numbers of fans to buy it. "

" It's a different world because of the Internet and bloggers. Now, every editor is concerned about speed because every minute counts. Speed is more important than content. Whoever gets a review out first becomes the authority. "

" I took a musician friend of mine to a Rolling Stone concert once, and all he did was cringe. I asked him what was wrong, and he said, 'Keith Richards' guitar is out of tune.' But 'Tumbling Dice' still sounded great to me. "

Robert Hilburn

Friend

Said

" When I began to interview people from the '60s, my first question was always, 'What was your favorite record?' "

" The greatest impact of 'We Are the World' seems to have been the video, which lets us see the singers take their turns at the microphone without any sense of star ego. "

" When I met Johnny Cash, I didn't know what to ask: where were you born, who was your favorite recording artist, what's your favorite color - I didn't know. "

" The Internet has changed how young people listen to music. Television programs like 'American Idol' changed how people listen to music. It was no longer the songwriters that we celebrated; it was the singers. "

" Like David Bowie, Madonna visualizes music so that her best work seems equally designed with the stage or screen in mind - not just the jukebox. "