"O.K., I'm a rock critic. I also write and record music. I write poetry, fiction, straight journalism, unstraight jour…"

"I was in high school (oh, I told you — that was kind of where they put you when they didn't know what to do with you …"

"Things started to go downhill. Instead of singing about taking tea with Mary Jane and boppin' your dingus on ol' Swee…"

"The top rockers have a mythic aura about them, the "superstar," and that's a basically unhealthy state of things, in …"

"By the end of the decade it had become obvious that perhaps the one constant of our variegated and strung-out peer gr…"

"The trend toward narcissistic flair has been responsible in large part for smiting rock with the superstar virus, whi…"

"The extravagant and ostentatious lifestyles that pass for charisma in a time when almost anybody talks about charisma…"

"What all this posturing and fake glamor results in is a vast detachment and cynicism on the part of the artists. Sinc…"

"A hero is a goddam stupid thing to have in the first place and a general block to anything you might wanta accomplish…"

"Realizing that life is precious the natural tendency is to trample on it, like laughing at a funeral."