Lee Ranaldo

“In the week following Sandy, we weren't flooded, but we were without everything else - I ended up living by candlelight - no phones, no computers, no light, no power. If we took a walk at night to go and find something to eat, it was completely black, with no lights coming out of the windows, no street lights: a very apocalyptic feeling.”

“Bands rise and surface in the British press so regularly that, for the most part, unless something really catches my ear, I feel like, 'Oh, if they're still around in two years, I'll see what they're up to.'”

“As a rock fan, you read of the big labels and the multinationals and the big tours with road crews and semi-trailers full of gear, and playing stadiums. In the '90s, that's what we did.”

“One thing I always hated with CDs is when people started putting 65 to 75 minutes on their albums.”

“Songs seem to always spring from improvisation.”

“I really liked the Jean-Luc Godard movie, 'Film Socialisme.'”

“I came late to Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention. I don't know why, but that's the beauty of music - songs and voices are there when you need them, when you're ready to find them, whether in their time or after.”

“New York always has a lot of creativity going on.”

“I absolutely love Las Vegas. I've been there a bunch of times on my own.”

“One of the things I loved - or I love still - about this Occupy movement is it's got a very gentle core. I mean, it's really decidedly nonviolent in the face of all kinds of situations.”

“Sonic Youth has always been the vehicle for my writing, you know, because it's a collective songwriting entity: we write our songs as a group.”

“I guess I see 'Goo' half as a really New York record because I think there are a lot of really particular New York references on it, but I also see it, for us, as the first of our records that really opened up to the larger world around us.”

“I've always played acoustically - it's how I learned. I grew up listening to Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Dylan and what have you.”

“'Europe '72' came out right around the time that I started going to see the Dead, and it had a huge impression on me.”

“My solo shows require a sit-down, indoor space.”

“Being a guy who was a geek with tape machines in the early days and really interested in how records get made, I was inspired in particular by how the Beatles were innovating when they were making those records late in their career while using the studio in a maximal way.”

“We used to have endless discussions with journalists about that: 'Why are you calling it noise? It's not noise, it's music,' and make references to everybody from John Cage to whoever.”

“We'll go in one direction with one album, and then we like to do the opposite right away. But it's not like we ever have an idea before we start - that would be too artificial. It all starts from just sitting in a room and playing.”

“It's easier to write about a celebrity, a personality, than it is to dig in and write about the music.”

“I've never been a huge Zeppelin fan, much to the chagrin of everybody else in my former band. But certainly those Pink Floyd records, I was really into them, especially 'Dark Side of the Moon.'”