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" Some writers sit down every day for two or three hours, at least, to write, whether they are in the mood or not. Others wait for inspiration. "

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" 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. "

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

" 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? "

" With the Internet today, it is possible to do some mixed media things where you can write about an artist and link to a song or video by that artist. But that was unheard of in the years I was at the paper. "

" 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. "

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

" Country music tends to be so sentimental and homespun, it's easy to stumble into self-parody, but Haggard has brought a freshness to the themes that places him alongside Hank Williams and Willie Nelson as one of the greatest country music writers. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" One of my great frustrations for 35 years at the paper was the fact I couldn't play a record for the reader when I was writing about an artist. How can you describe the beauty of Emmylou Harris' voice without hearing it, the sensual lilt of a Duane Allman guitar solo without actually hearing it, or the growl of Johnny Rotten without hearing it? "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I was driving to school at Reseda High School - I was a junior, and it was early 1956. I had a '49 Ford. I was listening to the country station, and 'Folsom Prison Blues' comes on... It didn't sound like the stuff I was hearing on the pop stations. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" I loved Roger Miller. "

" What's amazing is how rock n' roll lasted. It started losing its commercial power in the late 1990s. But think of swing, which we think of as this big music before rock n' roll. It only lasted five years in total. So, rock going 50 years is amazing, because young people want new things. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I'm guilty of being perceived as having narrow taste. I went after the artists that I thought were important - Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen and stuff. "

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

" 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 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. "

" 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. "