David Johansen

“In the late '70s, I had a band - the David Johansen band, for lack of a better name - and I started collecting, not records, but tapes from people I knew who had jump-blues records.”

“Sometimes I've found that by getting into a certain drag, or a certain feeling, you can cast off your mortal coil and really do something. I don't know if it's important, but it's something. It's entertainment.”

“Until I was six years old we lived in the projects, then my two brothers and three sisters and I moved to a three-bed that my mother's father built.”

“Most bands are commercial enterprises. But I'm not in one of those bands.”

“My father was a Norwegian tenor and my mother a New York Irish librarian.”

“Music is my love and to me acting is more mercenary. I don't pound the pavements for roles: if it happens, it happens. I hate that auditioning thing.”

“I think we as a band, as individuals, understand that all popular music stems from blues and jazz and even pop, but rock 'n' roll especially comes from blues.”

“Playing music is the best thing in the world. It makes show business almost bearable.”

“I've been around the block a couple of times, and the guy I am now is the guy I like to be.”

“The stuff that I dig, it's usually got a soulful component to it. A singer that I really like. I might not understand the language that they're singing in, but I'm really communing with this person.”

“I still do a lot of shows with Brian Koonin, but we haven't had a full band lately.”

“I'm doing exactly what I want to do, and I'm having fun doing it.”

“I've been tired since I was 15.”

“I'm afraid of me.”

“You try things on in life. You wear them for a while, and you see what's next.”

“I don't really like to sit around the house listening to my own records. They're not that good.”

“When I was a kid, I had some Charles Lloyd records.”

“I don't know why I'm alive but I know there's a reason for it.”

“I got arrested once on stage in Memphis for looking too much like Liza Minnelli.”

“When you're a kid, you have this feeling like you're indestructible. Your mortality doesn't even occur to you. But as time goes by, you realize, 'I better cut this out or that out if I want to continue to exist.'”