20 Great Heavy Metal Quotes
Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead died in 2015, but supplied our headline quote a few years before his passing.
The man who spoke with Lemmy was Dave Ling. As a U.K. rock journalist, Ling has spent countless hours interviewing the greats of the heavy metal world. I strongly recommend his website.
Within Ling’s site there are hundreds of quotations from hard rock artists.
Here are 20 quotations that are funny, scathing and somewhat insightful.
“Lemmy came to me once and said ‘Alice, I have quit drinking,’ and he had a drink in his hand! I replied ‘That must be Coca-Cola?’, and he said ‘No, there’s a little whiskey in there’. His idea of not drinking was not drinking a bottle of whiskey each night. Maybe just five or six drinks.”
Alice Cooper in 2019
Do I have any theories on why our audience keeps coming back? Maybe it’s some kind of intense communal masochistic urge?”
Rush’s Geddy Lee.
“I’m sick to death of people saying we’ve made 11 albums that sound exactly the same. In fact, we’ve made 12 albums that sound exactly the same.”
AC/DC’s Angus Young.
“People keep asking why we don’t play ‘Sinner’ anymore. I tell them it’s because we’ve repented.”
KK Downing, Judas Priest.
“Sharon told me about a place where they teach you to drink properly. It was the Betty Ford Centre. I thought, ‘That’s it! I’ve been doing it wrong!’. So I walk in, expecting a demonstration of how to drink a Martini, and I say, ‘Hi Betty Ford, where’s the bar?’ This receptionist is like, ‘What?!'”
Ozzy Osbourne.
“Mae West whispered to me, ‘Why don’t you come on back to my trailer?’ I said: ‘Because you’re 86 years old and I’m not even sure if you’re a woman or not’. But if I hadn’t have been married I would’ve gone. Definitely. Just for the experience.”
Alice Cooper.“
“Adding rap to rock music is a bit like taking the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen to a plastic surgeon, then asking him to give her a penis.”
Manowar’s Karl Logan.
“It was pretty obvious, really. Ritchie must have been suffering from pre-minstrel tension.”
Ian Paice on Ritchie Blackmore’s final exit from Deep Purple, back in 1993 to form Blackmore’s Night, a Renaissance music band.
“The day that this group becomes a machine is the day it’s over.”
Gene Simmons of Kiss, back in 1992.
“Gene lives about five minutes from me – I can see his ego from my house!”
Paul Stanley of Kiss
“What are my hobbies? Helping old ladies into the middle of the road.”
Lemmy, 1992
“If you want to stop the spread of AIDS around the world, give it to Z Records to distribute.”
Ex-Tyketto/Vaughn singer Danny Vaughn.
“If I was going to listen to anybody, I’d listen to me. I love the stuff I do. It’s the greatest. I’ve played things that were just the ultimate. If there had been blind people in the audience, they’d have walked away from the gig seeing.”
Ted Nugent in 1977.
“The only chick I could fall in love with is Kate Bush. I love her, totally. I cried at her gig at the Sunderland Empire a few years ago, then walked home 30 miles with my head in the clouds.”
Cronos from Venom, back in 1985.
“When I was doing cocaine regularly I would say it was very much out of boredom – plus the fact that I was addicted.”
UFO’s Pete Way.
“I’m a family-oriented guy. I’ve personally started four or five [of them] this year already.”
Van Halen’s David Lee Roth.
“I don’t own a gun. Actually, I own about 150 guns.”
James Hetfield of Metallica.
“Nicko McBrain and I have had some belting arguments. We’ve been virtually nose-to-nose screaming at each other, and with his nose being so flat, that’s very close up.”
Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris.
“I wouldn’t send him cat food if he was starving.”
Whitesnake’s David Coverdale on Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, 1994
Though he was not in the hard rock field, the final words belong to the brilliant, Frank Zappa.
“Rock journalism is people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t talk for people who can’t read.”
Frank Zappa.
