It was just like Howlin’ Wolf. Once you arrive at the point that you understand it, the emotional factor is darker than some of the saddest blues stuff. – Robert Quine
I started off with the really funky stuff like Ramsey Lewis, Milt Jackson, Kenny Burrell. – Robert Quine
By then I was in Brooklyn and drank my way through that summer. I stopped when I got sick of that and got a job at the Strand bookstore, which was a little better than the tax job. – Robert Quine
By many peoples’ standards, my playing is very primitive but by punk standards, I’m a virtuoso. – Robert Quine
I quit the tax job then and decided that I was going to play in a band. I answered ads in the Village Voice and went through two days of auditioning for bands. – Robert Quine
Meanwhile after failing the bar twice, I knew some people in New York and moved here in August ’71. – Robert Quine
I really feel fortunate to have been around then because there have been good and bad years in rock but the best years were ’55 to early ’61. I got to see Buddy Holly and everybody else. – Robert Quine
Reading music is something that’s inherently hateful to me. It makes music like mathematics. – Robert Quine
I think Blank Generation holds up pretty well. You listen to that with headphones and there’s a lot going on there with the guitars- it’s the product of a lot of fighting. – Robert Quine
I was coerced into taking piano lessons in the early ’50s. It was a quite unpleasant experience. – Robert Quine
