“We have been in danger of remembering Nixon as just another crooked office-seeker in the long gray line. He was, however, the first American president who ever harbored despotic ambition”

“The macho man should be able to climb into a ring with a hangover and a bad stomach and win the title: he should be able to drink and whore all night and still work a typewrit­er the next day: and more than anything else, he must always be capable of an erection”

“Girl group records were based in the relationship of a young girl and an older man (white, until Berry Gordy) who put her on a pedestal and held her in thrall; out of that relationship came some of the most urgent and intense rock and roll ever made.”

“The Outlaws chronicle the hard edges of American life and sing the psychology of white soul, no holds barred. They do for the country what Lou Reed does for the city”

“Max's heroically mixed quality had led to such meetings as Alice Cooper and Lou Reed, Candy Darling and Divine, Andy Warhol and Valerie Solanas, Sargent Shriver and Jackie Curtis, meetings which might not have a settings today.”

“For this high school generation, attendance at a Led Zeppelin concert is as mandatory as freshman English.”

“Hooks are what makes DJs and listeners remember a record. Elton’s gift for the hook is so universal that there is small likelihood that one of them hasn’t stuck in your pleasure center. Or your craw”

“Evidence in Knight’s apartment indicated that he moved in three worlds: the world of wealth and comfort to which he was born, the creative world of artists and writers, and the underworld of teenage hustlers. He kept the worlds separate”

“Critics and musicians have placed him in that inviolable musical trinity with Ellington and Armstrong, and still he remains the most elusive of our native-born geniuses”

“The convention this year felt more like a party than ever before, a big, busy party that doesn't really go anywhere”