Chris Stein Quotations

We exploded after a while and made a lot of horrendously stupid mistakes.

We're a pop art band. Not a pop band.

We didn't want a hybrid of the old stuff. The old records were very dense musically. Now there's a trend towards minimalist sound. That's the main thing.

Our fans come from a wide age group. At our shows, the kids are down in the front and the bald guys are in the back. They're all interested and curious.

Most of the bands that have regrouped or reformed didn't ring true for me. It smacks of cashing in. We wanted to become a band again and make a new record. It's unfair to fans and musicians to just release reissues.

The reason I brought this is if I ran into those (expletives). They sued us ... (so) they should have a bit of honor.

Debbie was accused of being too overtly sexual and now the standards are different. Times have changed.

It's a continuation. It feels like we were in the studio for 16 years. It was bottled up and this album was an outpouring.

It means a lot to everybody outside of the business, so much that it's come to mean more to us. It's sort of an insider music thing, not really a mandate of the people. But it's nice to be in there with all of my heroes.

It seemed to mean so much to other people, and it sort of rubbed off on me.

They wrote themselves out of the band history, as far as I'm concerned. They should have a little bit of honor. This is supposed to be rock 'n' roll. This is supposed to be friendly. This is like going through the trenches together.

They wrote themselves out of the band history, as far as I'm concerned.

It's nice. You meet some of your neighbors while you're there.

Being inducted seems to mean a lot to a lot of people, and by proxy that has sort of rubbed off on me. But it's not necessarily a mandate from the masses, so I don't know. We'll see.

A thing we always talk about in today's culture is that nobody is an outsider - everybody's kind of a hipster on the inside.

In many cases bands have a lot to overcome, business being what it is.

The vagaries of the industry and show business itself would not lead one to conclude a lengthy career - because things change. Popularities come and go. The tragedy of it is that somebody like Robin Williams should suffer from that, and be driven to commit suicide. If ever there was an untimely, unfair death, it was him.

CS: I always say there's a tribal element in a rock concert. There's a real back-and-forth thing that goes on between the audience and the performers.

We tap into a lot of things from musical history when making the songs.

In the early days, I often felt that I was taking a math test when we were playing. It was a profound feeling of having to prove myself.