Punk: Attitude

David Johansen:
You know, rock and roll had become this just be-denimed kind of, drum solo kind of thing, and what we wanted to do was bring it down to three minutes and put that Little Richard drag on top of it. And that's what rock and roll was to us, you know. We were just trying to make rock and roll, you know.

Tommy Ramone:
What happened, though, was that because we were playing so fast, the three-minute songs became one-and-a-half-minute songs.

Jello Biafra:
By the end of say, oh maybe mid-'79, the only people playing punk music left were the people who really wanted to be there. And so there was this big split, which meant punk went more underground, and got more intense, more purist in a way, which is both good and bad, and more hardcore.