Musician Quotes

I believe in pursuing my own morality. That is all I have ever stuck by. It is my own morality that really matters.

There is a downside to having one of the biggest-selling albums ever.

Sometimes I get a lyric, and the lyric, you know, comes off the page, and goes into my brain and comes out with a melody. Other times, I may create a melody first.

Sensitive, humbug. Everybody thinks I'm sensitive. Wait until they hear my new album.

My parents always told me I could be anything I wanted to be.

My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue, an everlasting vision of the ever changing view.

In my career I have never felt that my being a woman was an obstacle or an advantage. I guess I've been oblivious.

I'm a songwriter first.

I write heavily under the influence of James Taylor.

I went to London and performed in Eric Clapton's concert at the Royal Albert Hall. I'll work with him any time he asks me.

I used to hate the sound of my voice.

I think Madonna has a great deal of intelligence and capability. I have a lot of respect for her. She's taken her career and maximized it with intelligence and creativity.

I just sort of try to be a good person; try to write music that lifts people and makes me feel good to sing.

I didn't want to be an artist.

Eric Clapton is my dream guitarist.

The downside of videos is that it will put my vision in front of other people, so they might not get the chance to create their own.

I listen to both oldies and contemporary stations. I enjoy listening to current stuff because there's an energy to it that's inspiring.

You were able to sing something they related to instantly, because it was part of what you felt. It was part of what you had already traveled through. It's part of the people you were associating with daily. It was all of that.

Yeah. I've been pretty fortunate to travel I guess, all around the place.

Yeah. I'm amateurish. I can play enough to write a song, or strum on a little guitar to write out a song. But, I don't play well at all. I wouldn't even attempt for a second to play in public.

When we took on the name The Drifters, we became the new Drifters, and signed a contract to be put on salary, which I think was like a hundred dollars a week, a piece, five hundred dollars for all five of us.

When I got involved with The Five Crowns who later became The Drifters, and we got this hit record, I still was looking at this as kind of a fun thing.

We were doing things with a hundred per cent feeling. It wasn't programmed. It wasn't asked for. It wasn't structured. It was just there. It was very raw. I don't think the industry would allow that to happen again.

Those things don't happen today. I feel sorry for the kids in the industry today. They have on sunglasses, eat caviar in jet planes, but they'll never know the true feeling that we did.

The Phil Spector that I would meet has always been a nice, quiet, little guy who's very serious about his work; obviously you can tell that because each and everything he's ever done has always been charted.

The movie is actually from a book by Stephen King called The Body. When they were gonna put it to a motion picture, they found the story was a bit too strong for the title The Body, based on a young kid's movie. It would be too heavy.

The industry now wants to be in charge of everything.

One of the members of the group, I can't remember which one, found out we were making $3 - $5,000 a night. We were getting a hundred dollars a week a piece. Everybody got upset about it.

One minute we can be in a small club, the next minute we can be in a coliseum, and the next minute we can be in a small auditorium. It varies, depending on the promoter, the budget, and the travelling distance.

Of course, the kids who had never heard of a person called Ben E. King were then aware of the name associated with the song. That gave a tremendous lift to me as an artist.