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Musicians Badmouthing Other Musicians


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*WARNING* The following post contains foul language and may taint the image you have of some of your favorite musicians. You have been warned.

Sinatra on Elvis and Rock & Roll, 1957 - "It is sung, played and written for the most part by cretinous goons; and by means of its almost imbecilic reiterations and sly, lewd - in plain fact, dirty - lyrics it manages to be the martial music of every sideburned delinquent on the face of the Earth. His kind of music is deplorable, a rancid smelling aphrodisiac . . . it fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people."

More Sinatra - "I rued the day the Beatles were unfortunately born into this world. They are, in my mind, responsible for most of the degeneration that has happened, not only musically, but in the sense of youth orientation politically, too. They are the people who first made it publicly acceptable to spit in the eye of authority."

Miles Davis, 1970 - "I think I can put together a better rock band than Jimi Hendrix."

Pete Townshend - "Jeff Beck is pathetic."

Lindsay Buckingham - "I've seen Stevie's show, I've seen Christine's show. To me, they both bordered on being lounge acts, simply because they were resting so heavily on Fleetwood Mac's laurels. But I think you owe it to yourself and you owe it to your audience to try at least."

Nick Lowe - "Groups like Genesis and Yes are about as exciting as a used Kleenex. It might as well be Tony Bennett."

Todd Rundgren, 1975 - "John Lennon ain't no fu*king revolutionary, he's a fu*king idiot."

Robert Palmer - "With all the great musicians in this town [Memphis], why'd they have to fly Paul Shaffer in?"

Bob Dylan to Keith Richards - "I could have written 'Satisfaction' but you couldn't have written 'Tambourine Man'."

Andy Partridge, XTC - "What will Bob Dylan be doing in 20 years? To be truthful, who cares?"

Don Was, on what Debby Boone would be doing in 20 years - "I think they'll still be debating whether she was pushed from that building, or jumped."

Jim Reid, Jesus and Mary Chain - "Everyone must know how much we love the Stooges. Well, I've met Iggy Pop, and the guy's a sad, old, pathetic sh*t. We went to a rehersal studio and Johnny Rotten was there, and he was just this completely pathetic zero. He's a sad old comedian. I thought, 'Well, at least we've done more than that old fu*king scumbag.' Bowie is responsible for the worst side of music. Toyah Wilcox, the New Romantics. A fu*cking scumbag. Someone should've killed him. If he'd died in '72, music would be a lot healthier now. I don't know if things in pop can be shaken up, but I believe if anyone's done it, we have. We've caused a lot of change."

Clem Burke, drummer for Blondie - "We want to be one of the great bands, not like the Grateful Dead."

Marty Balin - I hate it when she does that sexy stuff on stage. It makes me puke! Fu*k Grace Slick? I wouldn't even let her blow me!

Mike Diamond, Beastie Boys - "I gotta say this - if I ever see Michael Jackson, I'm gonna light his Jeri curls on fire. I'm gonna sneak up on him with a can of lighter and go to work. I think if they had a 3-D movie in Disneyworld of Adrock punching Michael Jackson's face, they'd get a good draw. What would I do if I met him? I'd unplug his oxygen tent, rip off his surgical mask and spit in his face."

Lou Reed - "The Beatles never had anything to say. It was always nice happy stuff. What did they ever say?"

Lou Reed - "I'm not saying this to be cool, but disco sucks - can you imagine some kid wanting to grow up and play on a Donna Summer album?"

Lou Reed on Jim Morrison - "I didn't even feel sorry for him when he died."

David Bowie - "Bolan isn't camp. He's prissy amd fey and engrossed in his own image."

Nikki Sixx, Motley Crue on John Bon Jovi - "He's a wimp."

Tom Jones, 1966 - "I don't like Bob Dylan. I don't like his attitude or his records. All he stands for is a bad influence. Being cheeky with the press was bad. He says he's not a singer, so why does he sing? If he's going to be a public figure, he's going to be in the press. All that protest thing was a load of rubbish. I don't hate his records, I just can't stand it when people say he's a genius. I just want to forget about that fellow.

Elvis Costello - "I've already forgotten who Bob Dylan was."

Micke Hucknall, Simply Red - "Duran Duran are completely disgusting, crass, and offensive."

Geoff Britten, Wings drummer - "They said I hated Jimmy McCoullough's guts. What I really said is that he's a nasty little cu*t. There's a big difference, you know."

Morrissey, 1986 - "Madonna reinforces everything absurd and offensive. Desperate womanhood. Madonna is closer to organised prostitution than anything else."

Morrisssey - Reggae is the most racist music in the world. It's an absolute total glorification of black supremacy."

David Crosby - "Joni Mitchell is about as modest as Mussolini."

Johnny Rotten - "[Malcolm McClaren] is just a conniving little sh*t. People see some sort of glamour in him being just a total bastard." "The man is a pathological liar... The bourgeois anarchist. That just about sums him up."

McClaren - "[Johnny] was a total waste of time, a fraud."

McClaren - "What's that? Elvis Presley died? Makes you feel sad, doesn't it? Like your grandfather died... Yeah it's just too bad it couldn't have been Mick Jagger."

Johnny Rotten, on Elvis death - "Fu*kin' good riddance to bad rubbish. I don't give a fu*king sh*t, and nobody does, either. It's just fun to fake sympathy, that's all they're doing."

Bing Crosby, on Elvis death - "He never contributed a damn thing to much."

Ronnie James Dio, Black Sabbath, 1982 - "Ozzy Ozbourne is a moron. He couldn't carry a tune in a suitcase."

Joe Strummer - "PIL sounds to me like Uriah Heep on Mandrax.

Julian Cope, 1983 - "Once upon a time it was enough to know that U2 are crap, but not anymore. Now you've got to know why they're crap."

Boy George - "Prince looks like a dwarf who's been dipped in a bucket of pubic hair."

Paul Simon - "Once in a while when I turn on the radio in the car, the lyrics I hear are really banal. Toast - when I hear Carole King I think of toast."

Elvis Costello - "Ray Charles is nothing but a blind, ignorant n*gger."

Bette Midler - "I learned to be cheap from Lionel Richie, who is the cheapest person in the world."

Mick Jagger, 1978 - "Charley Watts could never play a solo. And don't believe him when he says he only joined on a temporary basis. It was the only gig he could get."

Marianne Faithfull - "The worst thing of all about being Mick was this rule that you must never show emotion, in case people realized you weren't cool."

Pete Townshend, 1975 - "Mick will eventually become the Chuck Berry of the sixties, constantly parodying himself onstage."

Ry Cooder on Mick - "It really bothers me that a twerp like that can parade around and convince everyone that he's Satan."

John Lennon, 1971 - "I think Mick's a joke, with all that fag dancing. I always did."

David Bowie on Mick - "He's not unlike Elton John, who represents the token queen - like Liberace used to. He represents the sort of harmless bourgeios kind of evil that one can accept with a shrug... I think Mick Jagger would be astounded and amazed if he realized to how many people he is not a sex object, but a mother figure."

Mick Jagger, 1977 - "I think Patti Smith is crap. I think she's so awful...She's just full of rubbish,. A poser of the worst kind."

George Michael and Andy Ridgeley of Wham on Springsteen, 1985 - Michael - "I like to watch audiences during gigs 'cos I find that euphoria good to watch. Both times I expected something really magical to happen but I just didn't see it. I think Springsteen's an incredible peformer. What annoys me is he gets to wiggle his bum and no one slags him off. What's so credible about his buttocks compared with mine?!"

Ridgeley - "The thing that astounds me is the 45 minute break he takes. Nobody mentions that in the reviews. They just say he played for four hours. Stunning! How do people fool themselves?"

(been keeping this to musicians, but...)

Andy Warhol on Patti Smith - "All I could think of was her B.O. She wouldn't be bad looking if she would wash up and glue herself together a little better."

Johnny Rotten, 1981 - "Spandau Ballet! Amateur hour! Stuff like jamming at rehearsals which you'd chuck out and wouldn't consider putting on plastic. To them it's a tour de force."

Sid Vicious - "John's just jealous because I'm the brains of the group. I've written all the songs, even from the beginning when I wasn't in the group. They were so useless they had to come to me because they couldn't think of anything by themselves."

Bo Diddley - "This group the Sex Pistols pukes on stage? I don't necessarily like that. That's not showmanship. They gotta get themselves an act."

Robert Smith of the Cure - "You can't drink on an 8-hour flight, pass out, and then go on stage... well, you can, but then you're Spandau Ballet."

Johnny Marr, 1984 - "The Smiths are more important than the Police! We're more important than they were or will ever be."

Mick Jagger - "I think the Sex Pistols have copped out. Now they're on the cover of Rolling Stone. That's a real cop out."

Keith Richards on the Sex Pistols - "It's a real feeling of deja vu. They puked at the airport, we pissed in the filling station."

Lemmy Motorhead, 1979 - "People who like smack also like Lou Reed, and that can't be anything in it's favor."

Cher on the Velvet Underground - "It won't replace anything, except maybe suicide."

Pete Townshend, 1989 - "Artists like U2 and Bruce Springsteen, who are more directly linked to me, I find very wanting."

Pete Townshend - Keith [Moon] was a very positive musician but a very negative animal. He needed you for his act, on and off stage."

Roger Daltrey, 1975 - "I think Townshend's always wanted to be me."

Ron Wood, on whether the Stones had reunited simply to cash in, 1989 - "No, that's the Who."

Johnny Rotten - "The Who and the Stones are revolting. All they're good for is making money."

Mick Jagger, 1978 - "I don't like people like Rod Stewart and Elton John, and I don't like the way they carry on. I get very upset being identified with that kind of person."

Boy George on former bandmember Jon Moss, 1989 - "He was a great fu*k."

Appolonia on Vanity - "Her IQ is equivalent to her bra size, which must be 32 now. I have nothing positive to say about her. She never taught me anything about film or music or anything worth having a conversation about."

Lou Reed, 1975 - "I enjoyed those shows I did at the Rainbow. I kept thinking, Frank Zappa fell 17 feet into that pit. I hate Frank Zappa and it made me so happy to think about that."

Roger Daltrey, on Pete Townshend, 1975 - "He's talked himself up his own arse."

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Yes, for talking bad mouth about the others. Example:

I rued the day the Beatles were unfortunately born into this world. They are, in my mind, responsible for most of the degeneration that has happened, not only musically, but in the sense of youth orientation politically, too. They are the people who first made it publicly acceptable to spit in the eye of authority.

The same man who did covers of their songs. Ironic a_____e.

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Yes, for talking bad mouth about the others. Example:

The same man who did covers of their songs. Ironic a_____e.

I'm thinking of the skit from SNL where sinatra does a song in a few seconds flat.

I love the irony of has-beens and untalented hacks bad-mouthing other artists. Then again, they could be voicing their opinions as boner fide music listeners and folks who paid hard-earned cash to end up with overrated, unlistenable trash (in the case of sex pistols). I love the jabs taken at mick jagger and POO2, though :)

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Lindsay Buckingham - "I've seen Stevie's show, I've seen Christine's show. To me, they both bordered on being lounge acts, simply because they were resting so heavily on Fleetwood Mac's laurels. But I think you owe it to yourself and you owe it to your audience to try at least."

Lindsay Buckingham is an idiot who stomped off stage in a petulant unprofessional manner in front of thousands of fans because he couldn't get back what he wanted - Stevie. Last time Lindsay was in town the promoters couldn't pay people enough to take a ticket, whereas Stevie's concerts sell out in hours.

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Sinatra is quoted as saying George Harrison's "Something" the best ballad he had ever heard. Sometimes the staunchest supporters are those who were at one time the loudest critics.

Actually, he said it´s "The Beatles´ best ballad"... which made George Harrison a bit bitter, he even complained about it in one of those Beatles documentaries or Anthologies or whatever on DVD. He never lost his sense of humour though... :cool:

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Well, I guess Frank's endorsement was not as lavish as I thought, but still it is a turn-around from the derogatory Beatle quote attributed to him on the initial post of this thread and indicates his conversion toward respect - to some degree - that was my main point. All the quotes in the initial post could have been recanted by those making the statements, had they felt a change of heart like Frank must have had in order to be so laudatory toward the Beatles.

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As far as I can see, most of the "badmouthing quotes" don't really stand up to much analysis: for the most part they are taken totally out of context, if the ones I already knew about are anything to go by.

e.g. Elvis Costello's infamous remark about Ray Charles seems to be totally outrageous, but is less so, when you have an appreciation of the context in which it was made.

Sid Vicious' remark about his contribution to The Sex Pistols is an utter lie and shouldn't even have been included. To make sense of this remark, one needs to acknowledge that, by the time of Sid's membership of the band, making outrageous (dumb) claims in order to stir up confusion and chaos (or just to have a laugh at some sucker journalists expense)had become an integral part of the mythology-building process.

I could go on, but I can't be arsed. I suspect that most of these examples, if subjected to similar contextual scrutiny, would crumble to dust.

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  • 2 years later...

Are these jokes or what? Because almost all of them have zero sources and you have confused/twisted lots of them, Here is one for naming:-

Bing Crosby, on Elvis death - "He never contributed a damn thing to much."

Correct quote of Bing Crosby was from 1956 and it was:-

"Elvis will never contribute a damn thing to music."

And in 1972, he had corrected himself by saying:-

"He helped to kill off the influence of me and my contemporaries, but I respect him for that. Because music always has to progress, and no-one could have opened the door to the future like he did. What he did was a part of History."

So there wasn't anything like he had said that on his death, edit it.

Edited by Guest
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  • 2 weeks later...

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