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" Kendrick Lamar is a great, great thinker. He's a tremendous artist. "

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

" 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. "

" His belief in the power of music to convey ideas - not just entertain - has filtered down to musicians in every field, from alt-rock to hip-hop, from Bruce Springsteen and U2 to Arcade Fire and Kanye West. Popular music is different because of Johnny Cash. "

" I loved Roger Miller. "

" In 1980, after 10 years at 'The Times,' I was at a crossroads in my personal life. I loved my family, but I was also so obsessive about my work that I found myself devoting more and more time to it. I wanted to be everywhere there was a good story, and that meant I had to choose between that and being with the family on important days. "

" I think Pearl Jam, greatly inspired by The Who, really did become a sort of musical conscience of a generation. I love such passionate songs as 'Not for You,' 'Wishlist,' and 'Long Road.' "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" You had to read what I wrote if you lived in L.A. in 1975 and cared about pop music. "

" 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. "

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

" Thanks to the arrival of such spirited and purposeful groups as X, the Blasters, R.E.M., and the Replacements, American rock has made a spectacular comeback. "

" In the role of Ziggy Stardust, Bowie seemed in 1972 like a strange alien creature, not so much coming from another planet as from a future age. His purpose: to warn us about a dangerous society where values were to be turned inside out. "

" Growing up in the icy isolation of Hibbing, Minn., Dylan, who was still Robert Allen Zimmerman then, found comfort in the country, blues, and early rock 'n' roll that he heard at night on a Louisiana radio station whose signal came in strong and clear. "

" By 27, Bob Dylan had already written 'Highway 61 Revisited,' the Beatles had released 'Rubber Soul,' Bruce Springsteen had recorded 'Born to Run' and U2 had delivered 'The Joshua Tree.' "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" Elvis may have been my first hero, but you couldn't relate to him. "

" If you care about who I want to write about, I'll write about the people you want to read about. "

" Johnny Cash was a good man. He tried to live up to his faith. It was just difficult. "

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

" 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. "

" As soon as I started working at the 'Los Angeles Times,' people warned me not to get too close to artists because it could make it difficult to review their work, and you can never really tell if the 'friendship' is genuine. "

" 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. "

" 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. "