Eric Carmen Quotes

This is a very screwed-up business. Record labels don't sign a lot of bands these days. We just want to find a home and stay there and make records and do our thing and not have to look over our shoulder.

You think publishing is tough but the music world is ten times tougher.

Doing things in my day was simple: you either signed to a big label or you signed to a very small label, and you worked with that one, and then they eventually signed you on to a big one.

I love music and musicians. And seeing great artists dropped from labels was really frustrating and sad to me.

I have always abhorred the business end of music.

Now record companies are run by lawyers and accountants. The shift from the one to the other was definitely related to when the takes started to get big.

I was with PolyGram; that was the big label that I was with for the longest, like 12 years.

I think we in the Alpha Band, which was a strange group anyway, weren't dealing with any of these issues. They sneaked up on us and took us over, before we know what was going on.

I still don't understand the music industry that much. Everything I learned was from hanging out with rock musicians in studios. I certainly have respect for those who make music their livelihood.

I like Rick Ross as a person. I like Jay-Z and Kanye West as people. But I hate the companies that they record for.

Actually, I have another record I made with them in 1976, but I've had such a bad experience with record companies, because I keep my head so much in music and not in business.

There are a lot of actors who try to get records made and try to make record deals, and everybody goes, 'Ugh.' It used to be expected in the entertainment business. I mean look at Sinatra, Bing Crosby. All these guys started out as singers.

I left the entertainment industry part of my life behind in 1983, when we decided not to work with major record companies anymore.

Well, I had a record deal since I was 18, and it got me where I am.

Mostly I've never let record companies become involved with my music, which was a very smart thing that my first manager Dave Robinson did, to keep them out of it.

We've managed to have a long career that is still quite vibrant, yet we've never had to kow-tow to record companies who said we weren't commercial enough.

There are no record companies in Waikiki.

I think that's the problem in a lot of music. We've got these record labels.

There are very few record companies who will entertain a middle-aged woman coming to them with original material.

The problem that I have is with the music business. For some reason it seems almost impossible to get anything, any music, released which includes improvisation or soloing.

When it all started, record companies - and there were many of them, and this was a good thing - were run by people who loved records, people like Ahmet Ertegun, who ran Atlantic Records, who were record collectors. They got in it because they loved music... Now, record companies are run by lawyers and accountants.

Island Records was the first record label to... acknowledge me. After that, quickly, Republic Records, and then Atlantic Records, Sony Records and Warner Bros. It was all the labels at once. It was absolutely insane, like, knowing that this many record labels were interested in me.

I've been part of running a label since I was a kid, so I understand how it works. But the more and more I learn about it, the less and less interested I am in it.

I don't think that old-fashioned idea of record companies exists any more.

Honestly, when I got to Hollywood I was trying to sell my songs.