DAVE GROHL on Kurt Cobain: “Every time he touched his guitar it was beautiful. He really had something that I’ve never seen in anyone else.”

MICHAEL STIPE on Kurt Cobain: “I had become the voice of a generation and I think Kurt found himself in the same position. We had a lot to talk about.”

TOMMY RAMONE on playing 15-minute shows: “We didn’t want to bore the audience. We wanted to just get out there, do our thing and leave. People have lives to live, you know?”

DEBBIE HARRY on the Ramones: “They were so funny but smart, so mad with determination, so serious and intense. They were great, always have been.”

JOHNNY MARR on the Smiths: “It was never about: we’re up here, you’re down there, and we’re great . . . Quite often there was physically no gap between the audience and the stage.”

LOU REED on David Bowie: “David’s a very smart man and he’s bringing in things from everywhere. If there was music on Pluto, I’m sure he’d work it into his next record.”

VIV ALBERTINE on Patti Smith: “It was utterly mindblowing. Everything she sang about, the way she released all the words, the strength and the passion of it, the utter contemporariness as well. It was like: this is it! This is my soul on record!”

GARY ‘MANI’ MOUNFIELD on the Stone Roses: “We always had amazing pants and great haircuts. A bunch of absolute cheeky monkeys, 100 per cent arrogant. Born to do it. So that’s what we did.”

NOEL GALLAGHER on the Stone Roses: “When the Roses came along, the goalposts kind of shifted towards us. When you see people like that onstage, it was really f***ing inspiring. And if it wasn’t for that there wouldn’t have been Oasis.”

ALEX KAPRANOS on indie rock: “Independent music almost represented a membership card to the outsider gang. To kick against the pricks, to kick against that kind of blandness.”

CARL BARÂT on the Libertines: “Everyone in the band was singing and playing like it was the last hour of their lives.”

JOHN LYDON on class rage: “I was an angry young man. I still am, probably, an angry old man. My feelings about how society has downtrodden my kind of working-class people, I don’t think those are false emotions at all . . . We suffer and you can f*** off.”

Explore Music

• CD Reviews

• Live Reviews

• Classical

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010