“When I got to California, I definitely just was wilding out. For a boy who thought he was going to die in Alabama and like never get to suck a dick ever, I was pretty stoked to be in the Bay. I was like, I live in a warehouse – I can drink beer, I can fuck boys, I can drink whiskey, I can do cocaine, I can start a rock and roll band.” – Brontez Purnell in a 2018 interview with Know Wave

“I’m going to be real – Brontez drives me fucking crazy! I love him, he’s one of the most prolific people I know, and he’s one of the most problematic people I know.

“Brontez and I met when we were like teenagers. I was 18 or 19, living in Pensacola, Florida and hopping trains. I went to Chattanooga, Tennessee, [where] he was wasted and shirtless in this punk house. We started talking and both realized we’re Cancers. I had this tattoo and he got a tattoo to match it.

“We were little babies and all had this idea that we wanted to start a scene with all these punks of color, this utopic idea where we all moved to Oakland. And it really went to shit because we realized we’re all broke, and we’re all black, and gay, and we don’t even have any instruments.” – Adee Roberson in a 2019 interview with Know Wave

“What’s funny is that the other members of Gravy Train!!!! were writing songs about poppers and sucking off bi boys but they were all in serious relationships the whole time that band existed. In the meantime I was partying a ton but writing these songs like, ‘I hope this boy will be my boyfriend.’” – Brontez Purnell in a 2018 interview with Know Wave

“The name Younger Lovers was a take on The Modern Lovers because I had been listening to that record all that summer, the first time I really heard it and it felt new to me.

“Sometimes I question Jonathan Richman’s intentions. Because when I was younger it was like, ‘oh my god I love him!’ But then, like, these days, when he sings ‘I don’t want no cocaine sniffing tramp in the bar’ I’m like, wait, I’m a cocaine sniffing tramp in the bar! ‘She eats garbage, eats shit, gets stoned/I stay alone, eat health food at home.’ And it’s like, ‘eww, I don’t want to eat health food with you at home. You judgmental prick.’” – Brontez Purnell in a 2018 interview with Know Wave

“Have you read Lucia Berlin? So she wrote this really cool book called A Manual for Cleaning Women. She was a mid century writer. A huge alcoholic, her husband died and left her with four sons to raise by herself. I think she was born in Kentucky but her dad had some job so she spent part of her youth in South America. Her stories are so crazy, like trying to get an abortion in Mexico in the 50s. Or waking up in the drunk tank with her children at home. Or she’s like, ‘always try to work for Black or Jewish people because you’ll get lunch.’ But also she existed at the same time as the Beats, Allen Ginsberg and all those dudes. They got to write about their dangerous lives, but if that woman’s writing had been famous she would’ve gotten her children taken away. There’s this weird part of us always having to have some cloak. Our lives are fucking dangerous. Not even having the access to this wider audience because on a different body it has a whole different set of circumstances. I always think about, I would love to sell a million books tomorrow but I also don’t think America’s ready for that. I really don’t.” – Brontez Purnell in a 2018 interview with Know Wave

“My friend Kat Case, she used to work for Maximum Rocknroll, she’s the one who turned me onto a lot of Replacements songs. I was living in the city and hanging out in her room every day. She played me that song, ‘Kiss Me On the Bus,’ and I thought about how different that song is when filtered through a queer lens. It means something totally different. But it’s such a beautiful song! I’m always obsessed with that softer song of rock n roll maleness or masculinity. Because there can be that really verbose style, ‘yeah, fuck that bitch!’ But the Replacements are like, ‘kiss me on the bus.’ And it’s like ‘hell yeah, I’ll kiss you on the bus! I’ll kiss you anywhere. I’ll go down on you on the bus, I’ll give you a blowjob on this motherfucker. We’re on the number 8?’”

“I sometimes say I do The Younger Lovers because it gives me license to be the cheesy poet I always want to be. I’ve always wanted to write Hallmark cards. You can do that with songs. I’ve never really liked music that was overly overly preachy, you know? It can’t be really direct. It has to deal with politics in a way that’s just direct enough but just abstract enough to connect. So that’s really how those thoughts filter in. When you write books you can write about really long form emotions and get into it, but a song, you have to hit those points, because that shit can’t be longer than three minutes because no one you know is going to listen past that. In a book you get to go in on it.” – Brontez Purnell in a 2018 interview with Know Wave

“I feel like I make this music, but underneath I want there to be this really rough edge to it that answers to the side of me that isn’t all just nice pop songs. Cuz the song are all about either boys who wouldn’t date me or they’re about some wrecked drinking buddy that I had. They’re pop songs, but there’s this edge to them. I feel like I was just fed up with boys, which is kinda what the Newest Romantic is all about. Being obsessed with something you’re done with.” – Brontez Purnell in a 2009 interview with Osa Atoe and Ramdasha Bikceem. Published October 2009 in Maximum Rocknroll, issue 317

“I have to say, at this point in time I would do things totally different but I was really broke and I was like, excited to do the record. It was trashy and lo-fi which is what my label was founded on. It just fit in a way, so when he asked I was like, ‘yeah, this is great! I would love to do it, but an LP is expensive. I just bought all these 12” singles and a lot of them are totally terrible so I would love to reuse the sleeve and let’s do a paste on.’ I was living in this warehouse space, Adee [Roberson] and I used to live there, and I had covers, space to tape things together, and access to bootleg photocopies, but I didn’t have money to do it. That’s why it was on splatter vinyl because that was the cheapest that the pressing plant had at the time, they were doing a deal on it.” – Brice White in a 2018 interview with Know Wave

“For a lot of the years I was deeply disappointed with The Younger Lovers. Between what I thought it was going to be when I first started out and what it was. It was also hard being often compared to bands that were like, in my same scene that I felt like, I don’t know, I felt like I was doing the same thing, but they were white, and they were straight, so they were automatically going to get a whole different set of outcomes, a whole different set of prestige.” – Brontez Purnell in a 2018 interview with Know Wave

“I think it’s really important to be disappointed. It shapes and it layers. I don’t know, there’s a real reward when something actually happens right or happens good. You’re allowed to sigh, to be contented. I always took it for granted – these boys I was singing about, these speculative boyfriends that never quite materialized – it was always about him being a phantom. I think that was really important. You can idealize anyone, but being with anyone is an automatic compromise. There’s always something getting lost.” – Brontez Purnell in a 2018 interview with Know Wave

“Even now it’s always been such a scrappy existence. It’s just like, ‘okay, well, I have songs.’ I was living at a warehouse when I made that first record, I had time to just go and play drums all day and see what came up. People would offer me things and I would be like, ‘okay, cool.’ Really big shows would come up and I’d have to pull together a band to do it. But I look back at it now and I don’t really understand how it existed this long with basically no money and me being the biggest backer of it. But I guess I always thought about how I come from a lot of southern-born black women and it’s like, they take care of two and three babies by themselves and I can’t make a band work? Get the fuck out of here. You know what I mean?” – Brontez Purnell in a 2018 interview with Know Wave