Ian MacKaye

“I work so I don't need to make rent through my songs, and I think if more people engaged with music without needing it to provide for their welfare, you're not beholden to anyone.”

“I feel completely fortunate to have this outlet for something I don't really feel like I have a choice in, to make music. I've got to make it.”

“I was into Ted Nugent, I was a Nugent guy. I was a skateboarder listening to Ted Nugent.”

“I don't dismiss the music that I was involved with, I don't think it was a joke, I don't think it was funny or a phase, I don't think it was just something I was doing back then, to me it was who I am. It connects all the way through. I don't distance myself from any of it.”

“I'm really anti-option, so computers have been my nightmare with recording. I don't want endless tracks; I want less tracks. I want decisions to be made.”

“I feel quite connected to the past, and my memory. Everything that I've ever done I can still relate to, and feel connected to it in a way. There's no part of my life that I look at and go, 'I don't recognize that person at all.'”

“My point of view is, I'm just a person, and there are times when I look at other people and think, 'My God, they spend so much time thinking about things that seem so absurd.' But I'm sure people must think the same thing about me.”

“With Napster and the sharing of music, of course, there are going to be people who exploit it. Greed has no end. But there's a lot of good that could happen. We shouldn't let the economic concerns of the major labels infringe on our freedom to share music.”

“American business at this point is really about developing an idea, making it profitable, selling it while it's profitable and then getting out or diversifying. It's just about sucking everything up.”

“I do feel like I have always, in my life, been inclined to be on the outside, walk a different path or something. Because of that, and increasingly over the years, my sense of distance from mainstream society or from the way culture works, I have a different kind of perception of it.”

“When people who are songwriters say 'That's my property and if you give it away for free then I'll lose my incentive,' then, well, good riddance.”

“And in fact, one of the central reasons why I never got involved with any drugs or anything is that I remember talking to people in maybe 1975 who saw Hendrix but couldn't remember it. I was like, 'How could that be?'”

“I have thousands of tapes, and photos and fliers, letters, posters, artwork - basically everything that ever happened, I kept. I'm not a hoarder, though. I'm sort of a librarian.”

“Yeah, if someone's selling downloads and collecting money for our songs I would be unhappy about that but if they're trading it I don't mind, obviously if I make a thousand records or CDs or whatever, I like to sell a thousand.”

“What I find interesting as a 40-year-old is the idea of trying to be a part of a pronounced, continuing independent culture. The basic tenet of America is that you rebel and then you get real.”

“I think sometimes my humor is extremely dry, and a lot of times I would say things that I thought were very funny but... I have a reputation of - people think of me as a very fundamentalist, humorless fellow.”

“I've had people call me from bands that are very popular, and they're like, 'What do we do? We want to do what you do.' It's almost impossible to do what I do, because you would have to start in 1980. You can't just do it.”

“There are many things that people do happily that I can't imagine why they would do it... But I have to say that even though I am critical or judgmental of society at large, I'm not critical of people individually. We are who we are.”

“There are certainly good examples of incredibly brilliant, beautiful music that has been made commercially available and sold everywhere. But I would say that, for the most part, quantity certainly does not speak well for quality.”

“Major labels didn't start showing up really until they smelled money, and that's all they're ever going to be attracted to is money-that's the business they're in- making money.”