Robert Quine Biography Quotes 18 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Robert Quine was born in 1942 in the United States and grew up with a voracious appetite for music that ranged from early rock and roll to blues and jazz. Long before he was known in clubs or on records, he was the kind of listener who wanted to understand how songs were built and where the electricity in great recordings came from. He studied at Earlham College and went on to earn a law degree at Washington University in St. Louis. Even during those years, his identity was anchored in music; he was the sort of fan who brought a tape recorder to shows not to hoard souvenirs but to study. His audience recordings of The Velvet Underground in 1969, circulating for decades among collectors, were later issued officially as The Quine Tapes, a testament to both his devotion and his discerning ear. He was also related to the philosopher W. V. Quine, a detail that hints at the intellectual intensity he brought to guitar playing.

Turning to Music
After trying more conventional professional paths, including work as a legal editor, Quine committed himself to music and moved to New York. Immersed in the city's mid-1970s ferment, he developed a voice that balanced raw attack with a rigorous sense of form, pulling from blues phrasing, rock minimalism, and the terse angularity of modern jazz. He worked days behind a record-store counter and nights refining a sound devoted to clarity, bite, and the expressive use of dissonance.

Richard Hell and the Voidoids
Quine found his first wide audience as lead guitarist for Richard Hell, who had just left Television and then The Heartbreakers before founding the Voidoids. Alongside Hell's jagged lyrics and stage presence, Quine's playing became the band's cutting edge. With Ivan Julian on guitar and Marc Bell on drums (later known as Marky Ramone), the Voidoids recorded Blank Generation in 1977, a cornerstone of New York punk whose title track quickly became an anthem. Quine's solos on the album are concise lessons in tension and release, exchanging flash for pointed, melodic violence. He returned for Destiny Street in 1982, reaffirming the band's unvarnished intensity and his role as Hell's most incisive foil.

Lou Reed and a New Platform
Quine's profile expanded further with Lou Reed. Their collaboration yielded The Blue Mask (1982), a stark and powerful album that placed Reed and Quine in interlocking guitar roles, with Fernando Saunders anchoring the rhythm section. The pairing continued on Legendary Hearts (1983) and on the concert set Live in Italy. Quine's relationship with Reed was both fruitful and volatile; he bristled at being mixed down on Legendary Hearts, yet the partnership left an enduring impression of what two authoritative guitar voices could do when they refused to step on each other's toes. In that quartet, Quine proved he could be as disciplined as he was fearless.

Sessions, Side Projects, and Collaborations
Between and after those high-profile bands, Quine recorded prolifically. With Jody Harris he made Escape, a set of instrumental pieces that showcased his sense of space and texture. He also partnered with drummer Fred Maher for Basic, another instrumental project that stripped his approach to rhythm and tone down to the chassis. As a session guitarist he was prized for coming in cold, absorbing the material, and carving lines that felt inevitable once you heard them. He became a secret weapon for singer-songwriters who wanted edge without clutter. Matthew Sweet brought him in for Girlfriend and later albums, where Quine's lines darted between sweetness and sting. Lloyd Cole relied on Quine for articulately abrasive and lyrical guitar parts on solo records that needed a voice tougher than jangle but more musical than noise. Richard Lloyd, another alumnus of the New York guitar vanguard, sometimes appeared alongside Quine in settings that highlighted their complementary approaches: Lloyd's sinewy melodicism paired with Quine's incisive angles.

Style and Musical Language
Quine's style fused economy and jagged eloquence. He loved the crisp attack of early rock-and-roll guitar and the harmonic daring of modern jazz, and he found ways to let those influences coexist without pastiche. He avoided guitar-hero excess while still delivering solos that stopped you in your tracks. Notes were picked hard but placed carefully; bends were expressive but never florid; feedback and overtones were tools, not accidents. He thought in contrapuntal lines, often setting up answers to his own phrases, and his rhythm work could be as memorable as his leads. That combination made him a natural counterpart for strong songwriters like Richard Hell, Lou Reed, Matthew Sweet, and Lloyd Cole, each of whom trusted him to sharpen a song's central idea.

The Velvet Underground and Listening as a Craft
Quine's early commitment to attentive listening bore fruit throughout his career. The Velvet Underground tapes he made in 1969 were more than bootlegs: they were his private conservatory. When they were released officially decades later as The Quine Tapes, they revealed an ear attuned to improvisation, form, and the way a band builds tension in real time. That sensibility informed every session he played, from punk clubs to high-end studios.

Personal Life and Final Years
Quine was private and dryly funny, with a reputation among peers for candor and high standards. He married Alice, whose death in 2003 devastated him. He died in New York in 2004; reports at the time described it as an apparent suicide. Friends and collaborators remembered him as a fiercely committed musician who demanded a lot from himself and his music.

Legacy
Robert Quine left a body of work that rewards close listening. You can hear his imprint on punk's articulation of intelligence through noise, on singer-songwriter records that wanted danger without mess, and on downtown instrumental music that balanced rigor and spontaneity. The musicians who thrived alongside him, Richard Hell, Ivan Julian, Marc Bell, Lou Reed, Fernando Saunders, Jody Harris, Fred Maher, Matthew Sweet, Lloyd Cole, and Richard Lloyd, underscore the range of a guitarist who could be both scalpel and broadsword. His recordings, from Blank Generation and The Blue Mask to his elegant session work, continue to circulate as touchstones for players who believe that taste, nerve, and curiosity are not mutually exclusive but mutually reinforcing.

Our collection contains 18 quotes who is written by Robert, under the main topics: Music - New Beginnings - New Job - Quitting Job.