"In the '80s, rock had irony, flash... and more sex appeal than ever." "By beaming rock videos around the world..." "MTVbecame music's first global network... and created a powerful new corporate medium... complete with wild imagery and calculated self-censorship." "At the same time, inner-city youth were improvising... a controversial medium of their own in the form of rap." "By the '90s, the scene had come full circle with alternative rock." "The new wave would become a big business... but only by climbing up from the underground." "Ladies and gentlemen, rock 'n'roll." "You'll never look at music the same way again." "When MTV started, we were naive, idealistic, and hopeful." "We thought, "This is it." "Everything Devo'd thought and been talking about..." ""what we'd wanted to happen is happening. "" "We want to create this thing called MTV, a new attitude." "We were going to be the first TV network ever... to sell the network identity as opposed to selling its programs." "Television used to be called a vast wasteland." "That was before Music Television, MTV." "MTV felt very revolutionary then." "MTV was very much in everybody's face, and there wasn't much on it." "We'd be in an airport... and people were coming up to all of us and going:" ""Hey, where's your top hat?"" "Or, '"Where's your motorcycle?" "'"" ""What are you talking about?"" ""We saw you on MTV."" "And this became the thing... that changed MTV's relationship with the music business." "When the artists started hearing everybody say, "I saw you on MTV... "" "they started saying, "Saw me doing what?"" ""I saw the video where you were doing this. "" "They thought, "I never saw that. "" "For months, we were going, "We gotta see this MTV."" "And the groups then got involved in the creative process." "We went to Warner Bros. And said, "We're gonna do a video to Whip It. '"" "They said, "Why?" "The song's already charting." "What do you need a video for?"" "And we said, '"We just think we should do one." "'"We want to have this girl, and Mark's gonna whip her clothes off. '"" "Of course, they said, '"Absolutely not. '"" "So we did it anyway with our own money." "This was the image of men and women... as corporate advertising likes to portray them." "Your all-American, Budweiser kind of guys and girls... the good-looking jocks and jockesses." "We were to appear on the Lily Tomlin special the week this was finished." "She said, "Do you have a video for this song?"" "We proudly said, "Yes, we do. " We sent it, and she canceled us." "We thought people would see the irony and sense of humor." "I thought it was pretty obvious we were doing satire." "In those times, it seemed fun to do videos." "There weren't too many of them, and it was fun to see yourself on TV." "The first video we made, Our Lips are Sealed, in the car... we thought, "What is a video?"" "We just didn't take it seriously at all." "We went driving around the city and jumping in fountains and things." "We thought it was ridiculous that we were doing it." "Little did we know that, that medium became such an important part of music." "At the end of '81 is when we started touring with The Police." "We opened for them, and that's really what blew the lid off of it... when our record went to number one and theirs was still at number six." " Sorry, but, you know..." " The opening band." "In those days, it was very different." "You could make an album, two albums." "The record company would still be behind you." "It wasn't such a fast turnover as it is now." "There was much more..." "The record company believed in development then." "It wasn't about, "If you have two singles and don't get your video on MTV..." ""then you're finished. "" "At first, the general consensus was that I would never be a pop star." "They wanted to release Do You Really Want to Hurt Me." "I was against it." "'"This shouldn't come out as a single." "This will be the end of us. '"" "And I was wrong." "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me was something sincere... that I'd written from a real-life experience." "It had black and white minstrels in it, and black guys painted black." "For some reason, MTV decided that they couldn't show that." "MTV in the early years was bullshit." "I didn't understand it, never watched it, didn't care about it." "So, we have Kurtis Blow with The Breaks." "We have Melle Mel and Grandmaster Flash with The Message." "And they couldn't get arrested on TV." "Rap not only had a problem with television... it had a problem with radio and black radio." "Here you have a community... that had nothing to represent themselves." "Nothing." "Everything was somebody else's expression of reality and society." "So we were forced to take that, mutilate it... and give it back as our expression now." "At that time, breakdancing was a real big thing then." "This is where you would have two males, or two females... or a male and female compete against each other." "Graffiti was a thing for all the artists." "Graffiti is not an art... but I can sure as hell tell you that that's a crime." "You could just jump the fence." "It was like a schoolyard fence." "You could go into the yards and put your name up... then wait for the train to go by, and that was your finale for the day." ""Wow!" "My name is traveling all through New York city. "" "Hip-hop is the umbrella." "Hip-hop is the way you move your body." "It's the way you talk, the way you think, the sensibility." "It's the way you..." "Whether it's graffiti, popping and locking, breakdancing, and everything else... it's the sensibility." "And it's one of the richest sensibilities... that's come along in a long, long time." "You had your solo rappers, Kurtis Blow and Melle Mel." "But then you had the Furious Five, Treacherous Three, Double Trouble." "So this is how two MCs would do it at the same time." "But the first guy on a B-Boy rapping tip..." "What I mean by "B-Boy," you know, over breakbeats with a DJ... and cutting it up." "The first guy that fascinated me was Melle Mel, because he was clear... he had a good voice, and he rhymed on beat." "And his DJ was fascinating." "DJ Flash was incredible." "I had come up with... a mixing technique which I called the Quick Mix Theory... where I was able to take two copies of the same record... on two different turntables... and repeat the climactic part of the record over and over again." "And this was around 1979, where I kind of saw this guy do it." "I said, '"This guy's got it right." "This guy's doing it right. '"" "When we heard a rough draft ofthe Message... the lyrics were quite dark." "We felt, '"Why would the world want to hear something like this?" "'"" "It was like an explosion." "You would hear it on BLS." "You turned the dial two notches, you'd hear it again." "Turn the dial to the left, four notches." "You'd hear it again." "It was all over the place." "I was shaken up, a little scared." "I grew up listening to my influences... like your James Browns, your Sly and the Family Stones." "But to hear my own record like that, it was..." "I want my MTV!" "We were playing probably about the same percentage black videos as white videos." "The same number of black artists as white artists had produced videos." "Sorry, MTV, but I got to tell people this." "I'm in New York." "It's 1981." "I get a phone call." ""Don Letts, we want to interview you." ""You're the man who makes the Clash videos. " Fine." "I go to MTV." "I show up in the offices." "Everyone's looking at me funny... like I should have used the tradesmen's entrance or something." "Somebody comes down, calls me into an office, sits me down, and says:" ""Don, you have to understand..." ""that we have a little problem here. "" "What he was saying is he didn't realize I was black." "He went on to tell me that, at that time... the policy of MTV... was to cater to a Midwest white audience." "Therefore, they weren't really playing black videos." "He even gave me an example of how strict this rule was." "He cited Wordy Rappinghood... which was a cartoon with animation video." "But he said, "That sounds too black, so we don't play that. "" "We could not get Billie Jean on MTV." "CBS threatened to pull their roster unless MTV started to play black artists." "I think the story that went around was Walter Yetnikoff... who was the legendary sort of... pound-the-tables head of CBS Records..." "I think what happened was Walter told Michael... that MTV didn't want to play that video." ""I went and told them, 'You play this video, or I'll burn you down. "'" "With the big threats, and made himself look good to Michael." "When they started playing Michael Jackson's video... they considered that a great achievement." "But if you're black... you remember Michael Jackson from 1969." "So maybe it was a big turnaround for white America... but for black America, and for myself, I wasn't thrilled." "That was the beginning of music television, I think." "And it was Michael Jackson, Thriller, on MTV." "MTV and Michael rode each other to glory." "This is a rock 'n' roll museum." "You guys don't belong in here." "Somebody had to take the banner to the next level." "And it had to be a group that was willing to do something... that would be a milestone, not just another record." "When I saw Run-D.M. C..." "I said, "This is how it's supposed to be done. "" "Those boys are def!" "They are def!" "We put the record out, Sucker MCs." "We did a lot of praying." "When we put this record out, Sucker MCs, nobody had a rap album out." "We just wanted our record to play... like some of the records on the big radio station." "MTV came along as everything was rolling right into place for us." "Everything was falling into place." "We couldn't stop it from falling into place after a while." "Then MTV, we got a call from Russell." "Something called MTV added us, it's really big to them." ""What's MTV?" Gather that together." " We didn't know MTV." " Didn't have cable in Hollis." "But they're very excited at the office... that we're gonna get regular rotation with Rock Box on MTV." "'"You don't understand how big this is. '" '"Okay, I'll tell D." "'"D., we got added on something called MTV." "They're very excited about this." "'"This is a big breakthrough. '"" "So we saw that they're happy, so it must be something big." "Raising Hell was big." "Everybody wanted to wear the black Levis and the black sweatshirt." "Everybody else thinks, besides rock 'n' roll..." ""Okay, it's time to go on stage." "Give me my wardrobe." ""I need my sparkles." "I gotta look good for the people. "" "When people actually just want to see you in your jeans." "They want to relate with you." "Bruce Springsteen wears his jeans, and you go out on stage." "Walk around all day." "It's time to go on stage." "Keep walking up to the stage." "That's what they wanna see, so that's what we did." "We brought what we was in the alley rapping." "Time to do the show. '"Turn the camera on." "'"Let's do the same thing we were doing in the alley. '"" "They said, '"That's real, what I want. '" We did what we were doing." "We took the beat from the street and put it on the TV." "My favorite rap album of all time, hands down:" "Run-D.M.C., Raising Hell. 1986." "I remember I was in a record store, staring at this record." "I couldn't believe it." "I'd known the guys for three years, but I kept flipping it around." "I stayed in the store for an hour." "I said, "This is how rap's supposed to..." ""Rap is really bigtime." "This is how it's supposed to be. "" "We were getting ready to make a rap record... over the beat Walk This Way." "Before rap records were made, we would rap over Toys in the Attic." "I was getting ready to rap over the first three seconds of the record." "With them loud guitars coming, I'm mad." "I'd lose 10 seconds at the start of the record." "If it ever got to him singing, there's a problem, I'm mad at the DJ." "Rick Rubin walked in and just took over." "'"Let's really make the record over." "Let's call these guys. '"" "Which weren't doing well at the time, '"Let's make Walk This Way over. '"" "Joe and I flew in, and there were these three guys... doing this thing called rap, which was relatively brand-new." "Rick said, '"Just kind of play along and get a bass. '"" "So I played bass on it, and it kind of built this track up." "They came in and rapped it." "They rapped whatever words they thought they were, which was cool." "He was mad at it for a while." "He was mad at the fact that, '"Oh, my God, the rap... '"" "Everybody was like, '"Run-D.M.C. Made y'all rap. '"" "For a while, they were a little hurt by it." "Everyone was saying that rap is just a fad." "As a matter of fact, hip-hop, the whole thing, is a fad... and it's gonna die soon." "People were saying, no way was rap gonna work." "Even though I didn't like it much at first, I knew then that it was gonna work." "A lot of rb artists back in the days used to say all kind of things." ""It's not music. " Rock-'n'- roll artists, as well." "I don't think it's the highest form of music that you can make... because you're using someone else's melody." "I just took offense to that." "I said, "No, it's more than that. "" "They still say things like, "It's not music." "It's garbage. "" "Rap's short for "crap. "" "Rap was computerized rot." ""If Hitler was to make a song, it would be rap. "" "I first designed Public Enemy in the footsteps of Run-D.M. C... who I think, and still think, are the best rap group ever in rap music." "So I designed my group after them, and I said:" ""After studying Run-D.M.C., I can't go wrong. "" "We recorded Criminal Minded." "That album was all about introducing the new style." "That's all it was about, the new style." "We are taking over the new style." "We came with a different ball game... of consciousness, self-knowledge..." "But also, on a musical end, we came with a faster tempo." "The biggest difference in It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back... is that the beat range of a lot of rap records... were 98, 96 beats per minute." "And here I come with hip-hop, reggae... and 16-bar rhyme styles..." "Like, that's it, that's all, solo, single, no more, no less." "And at a time when people was going, "He's this, I'm that. "" ""Throw your hands in the air, just clap. "" "And our stuff was more like 109 beats per minute." "The kids was just going crazy for this style." "All right, all right!" " Who the hell are you?" " We're the band." "The band?" "Where's your instruments?" "What the..." "We only play rock music here!" "Yo, why you dissing, man?" " Rock 'n' roll!" " Yeah, dude." "Like, I think we're the band." "The first white rap that got across to me... was the Beastie Boys, because they came from the same environment." "Them guys, they were some bugged-out... gentlemen." "The Beastie Boys outraged audiences as the opening act for Madonna... on her 1985 Virgin tour." "In 1990, she outraged executives at MTV... who banned her Justify My Love video." "There are all sorts of artists... who are using music in a not-so-central way." "Something else is the center of what they're doing." "For example, the highly controversial Madonna." "People don't like her... because she seems to use music as part of the package for herself." "I say, "Why not?"" "If that's what she wants to do, why does music have to be the center of it?" "Why can't lifestyle be the center, and music be part of the presentation?" "I like Madonna." "But, for me, she went a little overboard... for me, my limit." "I felt like, after a while, she just wanted to shock people." "That's all she was interested in, shocking people." "All the people that have stood out, stood the test of time... are people that have had more than just their music." "When video came about and we saw the groups making videos... that were basically them bouncing around, we decided not to do anything like that." "The English have this uncanny knack of packaging... giving something a look, a style... and making it into more than just a sound." "I think much more so than the Americans." "So I wrote the actual script for the video ofSweet Dreams... as a kind of surrealistic, short, three-and-a-half minute film... largely influenced by Salvador Dalí's L'age d'or." "And the idea of a cow... coming and disturbing the reality of a boardroom meeting... or vice versa, a boardroom meeting being in the middle of a field of cows... to show the actual sort of uselessness and the stupidity... of people making decisions that think they're altering the world." "But in America, we speeded up a whole process." "We didn't go there and tour for years and years... 'cause MTV kind of did it for us." "I think it sped up the process." "It didn't replace road work." "At the time, I remember discussions with my buddies:" ""We don't have to tour anymore." "We'll just make a video. "" "It certainly helps... to have your video played 20 times a day on TV." "The trouble with being a visual artist... is that the visual aspects of one's art... generally leave their marks more graphically... than the more musical form of what you do." "I originally disliked MTV quite a lot... because I thought it was a real safe play... and I still think it does play safe in many ways." "But I think that it's undeniably created a forum... for some of the most interesting film and video work... that's been done in the last 10 years." "It's like a lot of things today are forced on you... in your ears, in your eyes... whether you walk down the street with neon signs... music blaring in lifts, in restaurants." "A lot of the time, MTV can be like that." "It's just like wallpaper blaring at you." "But every now and then, there's a great filmmaker or great group... that has a great thing on, and it's worth it for that." "Video is the worst thing that ever happened to music." "It's taken a lot of magic out of music." "What the video age and MTVhas killed off... is this whole thing about how now a song is this visual." "The great thing, in the early days... was you could just sit there and hear these songs... and make up your own images and find your own things in it... and let your mind wander." "And artists that are not particularly over-talented... but because they look the part, become stars." "Fortunately, we came in before that started." "Would you get someone like me now... that doesn't look like a million dollars?" "No." "I don't think you would." "If they're on television all the time, you've taken some of the thrill of it out." "When I was a kid and David Bowie was playing at Lewisham Odeon... it was a big thing." "It was six months of waiting... and it was exciting." "Now you just turn on your TV." "It's like, "David Bowie." "Yeah." "KISS."" "I've seen things on MTV that have just made my eyes go like this." "They're shockingly original and fabulous things." "Some of the best video makers now... can do things in a four-minute pop video... that they would never, ever be able to do in any other forum." "I'm thinking, for instance, of the Red Hot Chili Peppers." "Rock 'n'roll is sexuality personified." "It's attitudes." "It's all the things your parents told you don't do, you can do." "It's the freedom to express yourself." "It's a good time." "It's being alive." "It expresses the times." "It's a way of..." "It's a magazine, newspaper that's the truth." "If you listen to rap today, it's all about the truth... which is all we all want, just give me a little bit of truth." "Middle America might be saying, "Not in my backyard. "" "They would never see what was going on if it was up to them." "Out of sight, out of mind, seems like their credo." "As Americans across the country began to accept rap as a reputable form of music... the West Coast rappers joined in with an even harsher view of the inner city:" "Gangsta rap." "This is what this guy, this child has seen all of his life... but when you put a beat to it and put some rhythm... you say you don't want to hear it." "You understand me?" "But he's only telling you what he was raised around." "This is what is in his environment... and he's expressing it the only way he or she knows how to express it." "Well, you know, N.W.A., Niggers With Attitudes... when I heard their first album..." "Straight Outta Compton, I thought it was brilliant." "They said things outwardly... on tape, on a record, that people would only think." "Some things that you say and do... go a long way to influence those that listen." "And unfortunately, I feel, my opinion only... that it has only resulted in a lot of negativity... within the black community." "It's not negativity." "It's niggativity." "It's niggative." "And they represented it for the West Coast." "They actually single-handedly put the West Coast on the map." "Ice-T was doing it." "Ice-T was the forerunner." "He was like John the Baptist." "I created the crime line." "I was the first person to really rap about crime." "More than the attitude in '"gangsta rap... '"" "it's become a thing where a lot of the guys from the West Coast... where what's going on in the neighborhood... is blended with that particular type of music." "In sales... these guys go Platinum and Gold... like we breathe." "Rap is going in so many different directions now." "It's a versatile music." "A lot of white kids are learning a lot about black people... because of hip-hop, you know?" "We all get to learn about each other." "Hip-hop is like the CNN for the youth." "You don't start a band to save the world, you really don't." "You start a band for all the wrong reasons." "Just to make a big noise." "And roar at the world." "That's where it starts." "And later on in life, you develop a conscience." "When you begin to get real popular... you have to be careful that obviously there's not a dilution... into some very simplistic terms of what you're doing." "America's future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts." "It rests in the message of hope in songs of a man so many young Americans admire:" "New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen." "Tonight in this city, there's people going hungry." "There's old folks whose social security checks don't get them through the month." "There's people who've been hit by unemployment." "People who the trickle-down theory of economics ain't trickling down to." "At the time, part of the idea was that I wanted the band to come out to be... a bit of an alternative voice... to the image of America... that was being presented by our Reagan administration." "In a way, the communication has affected so many things." "In music, and even the Berlin Wall, and perestroika and glasnost." "It's been very powerful, and people see what's going on." "The information between videos and films and music and everything else... when people absorb this, how powerful it is... the changes, it pulls the walls down." "And it wasn't Interpol or the CIA or anything else... that turned all this stuff around." "It was music, video, films, and information." "I think rock 'n'roll is very powerful." "It's a tool for bettering the world these days." "The conveyances that give us rock 'n' roll... are contributing more to the change in society than rock itself." "MTV, for instance, a channel which conveys rock 'n' roll to us... actually instigated a whole method of trying to involve youth... with changing politics and voting." "What's up?" "It's real popular in rap right now to diss the establishment... or complain about the establishment's faults." "What needs to be popular is getting y'all out there to vote." "Know what I'm saying?" "Trying to change the world with rock 'n' roll... is kind of a funny thought." "I don't think you can." "I don't think it has any power to change the world." "It only reconfirms or reaffirms to people where they're at." "One nice thing it does is brings people... that feel disenfranchised and lonely, together." "The whole idea that we could change the world musically... with good thoughts, positive energy, good vibrations... we could write songs that would make people love, not hate each other... we could put an end to war and violence by just positive thinking... was really a wonderfully innocent idea." "It didn't quite work, but it was a great idea." "To change the world, you must get out there and change it." "Music won't change it." "Music changes the way you live in the world." "It changes the way you see it, but it doesn't change the world itself." "I just remember Salt and myself in a studio at the time... and we were watching the news... and Magic Johnson just came through the TV:" "'"I'm HIV-positive. '"" "And we just sat there, fell, like, "Oh, my God!"" "And it just hit us." "And from that day on, it was like, "Oh, my God... "" "You know what I mean?" "A lot of people..." "That's home to us." "That's, like, close." "That's the circle we hang in." "That's young." "We need women to pick up women now, especially with all the..." "You know, how the guys diss the women... gangsta calling women hos and bitches and things like that." "We kind of counteract that with the things that we say." "Even political songs become pop songs after they're old." "It seems to be that self-consciousness... is what suffocates... the kind of creative spirit in anything... but especially in rock 'n' roll." "Look what you've done to me." "You've made me very famous, and I thank you." "I know you like your pop stars to be exciting... so I wore these." "Between stadiums, excessive indulgence... the growth of the media, the audiences, and record sales... rock 'n' roll became big business." "I think U2's popularity is founded on several things, actually." "One is that they write great songs." "Two is that they work extremely well as a band." "But I think most importantly... people sense that their commitment is real." "Not many things travel well around the world because of language." "The one thing that travels well is rock 'n'roll." "I remember in the Himalayas... up at Namche Bazaar, which is the last element of civilization... before you enter into Everest base camp area, Khumbu valley... it's up around 16,000 feet." "It is the highest point of any civilization." "This was the model for Shangri-La, that old, ancient movie." "I remember walking into a little box-room, like a warehouse area... where they stored rice and grain, there was a picture of Duran Duran." "In the last six years, I've been in 35 countries... many of them over and over again... on every single continent, in the name of rap." "People say, "Do they like rap in China?"" "I say, "What do you think I've been there for?"" "Like I went over there to play ping-pong, or some shit." "People thought it would probably spread east to the East Coast... maybe somewhere down south." "Did I think it was going to go to Australia, Africa..." "England, and Paris?" "I don't think so." "Hip-hop started here, you know, in one place... and it's all over the world now." "You got Japanese MCs... and all peoples from all nationalities, rhyming on the mike." "I've been to India and seen an Indian rap group... rapping about things happening in that village." "There are cultures in the world that are disappearing." "To some people, it's very important that they be preserved." "How does that fit in with a system... where in every country of the world now... people want to watch MTV and play rock 'n' roll?" "How are the young people gonna realize the value of their own music?" "What I'm excited about right now... is that rock 'n' roll, at this point, is mutating." "It's turning into something else." "In fact, the term "rock 'n' roll"... is over." "And I'm just excited to be at that point... where the ground is giving way." "I can really feel it just about to go under our feet, and I just want to let go." "You know, I want to go with it." "I think that's there's been a bit of a revolution... in popular rock 'n' roll in the last few years... with the success of Jane's Addiction and Nirvana breaking the ground." "And I think that people were just sick of listening to crap on the radio." "Bands left over from the '70s still putting out albums... and that's what the radio stations were eating up... and kids were like, '"This does not relate to me." "'"This is not my generation of music. '"" "And so radio stations picked up on it." "Lollapalooza picked up on it, and here we are." "I think what I look for in bands more than anything is attitude." "I think that America has a really good, thriving rock scene, you know." "People who have got something to say... something other than, you know... clichés." "The reason I chose Lollapalooza as the title for the concert... is because when I looked it up, this was the exact terminology:" "'"Something or someone great or wonderful. '"" "Two: "A giant-sized lollipop. "" "It's like this alternative rock thing." "I don't know how many times I've heard that word thrown around, "alternative. "" "It's, like, alternative to what?" "The media has really sucked up all of it." "It's the main genre of music... that's really popular right now." "When I think of alternative music..." "I think of just something different from what's happening in the mainstream." "This is about as mainstream as you can get." "Not that it's bad." "You have a kind of multicultural event... that's designed to open people's eyes up... to new sorts of music they wouldn't have heard before, and stuff." "This is great, and..." "I'm not sure if it's exactly happening that way... and I'm not really sure if this generation's eyes... particularly want to be opened up." "It's the only thing of its kind in the United States." "Kids just want to blow off some steam and come to the big rock show." "It is all about... bonding together in some way... and rebelling against the older generations... and everything around it." "But I just don't see where the rebellion actually is." "I might be a bit pessimistic, but I think that rock 'n' roll is dead now." "Rock 'n' roll is dead?" "What a silly statement." "Rock 'n' roll has now become a conformity... which is completely anti-nature to rock 'n' roll." "Therefore, it's dead." "Rock 'n'roll, when it starts calling itself rock and roll... that's when it has its problems." "When you have rock 'n'roll groups talking the same thing over and over." "When the music expands, that's when it tends to do better." "Same thing with rap." "A friend of mine who works in computers and high-tech industry... said that for him, he saw a 21st century... where people, to escape the high concept... and the agonizing realization... that we no longer understand or control our technology... would want to go home and touch something made of wood." "And I think that is kind of the place that rock is taking." "Things like grunge, for me, and Eric Clapton and rap... have a small, comfortable feel about them." "They are almost tribal." "They're things that you can touch." "They're made of wood." "You can't kill rock because it will always exist." "As soon as you assume it's dead, up pops Nirvana or some other thing." "They'll try and sell it... but the underground is always... ten steps ahead of the lawyers and accountants." "And so there will always be rock 'n' roll... or hip-hop or whatever underground music." "Now it's rock 'n' roll." "Now it's amazing to see black people do rock 'n' roll." ""You're black, and you have a rock 'n' roll group?" "Wow. "" "That's what happens when the rebellion leaves the music." "It becomes Americanized." "I think that it's inevitable for music to become watered-down." "It's inevitable." "But the point of keeping it rebellious... is to keep people's awareness alive... as long as you can." "I've no idea what the future of rock 'n' roll is." "Nor am I really interested." "The future of rock 'n' roll:" "More surprises, both hideous and wonderful."