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Punk was more based on social change than on music, so it didn't bother me too much. It wasn't really a musical threat.

Punk was a protest against work and against boredom. It was a sign of life, a rant, a scream, a rejection of bourgeois morals. But have things improved since then? Arguably, they've got worse.

I think one of the most important things punk brought back was the whole concept of staying independent and doing things yourself. It made music a lot less boring in any category you can name.

Punk rock really came out of N.Y. as a philosophy before the groups were ever recorded. I had a kind-of intellectual interest in the idea of creating a new scene that could be a grassroots thing.

I think that clearly it has an influence, to be coming of age during the punk rock era, to come from a difficult and sporadically violent background, to have been in and out of such chaos, I think it actually helps. But I don't know for sure.

Punk rock wasn't a career choice. It was a hobby that we did for fun. We never thought we'd get as big as our idols in T.S.O.L. or certainly not the Ramones.

To see classic rock, you had to go to an arena. But punk was happening everywhere, even in little towns in the middle of nowhere in Maryland. I'd drive out to places I'd never been, just to go and see it.

By the time I was 19, punk had occurred. It had a completely different cultural dynamic to it which rejected everything and started again from the year zero.

So many big magazines just dissed the whole punk thing as nothing, but really, it was a big thing. It really changed, and that's what we wanted to do - change the system.

In the early days, myself and my friends were into punk because we had no money, just very basic instruments and skills. It was more about the ethos and the energy.