Willam Belli Quotes

I do six shows a week. Sometimes my voice gets tired, but I love it.

I don't know how to do a show not in front of a live audience.

What was important to me was entertaining the audience, and whether that meant winning, losing, singing, or whatever it was on the live show we were doing every week, which was awesome, I was game for it.

I've asked to go back into theaters and smaller venues because to me, in smaller venues I can really demonstrate my commitment to quality. Theaters are great containers for music.

If you are in a play, and you catch a cold, you are able to muddle through. If you are carrying a musical, it's a different thing altogether. It's the great fear of any singer's life.

Records are one thing, and obviously, without hit songs, you don't have the opportunity to do your shows. But my live show has always been my selling tool.

And the live show is still our main thing.

When you have a play, you have to be on every night.

As I laid in the hospital bed I started thinking that I had a show to do. I was hoping the Doctor would put me together so I could do the show.

Seeing the energy of 'SNL' made me want to be a part of it. If that was a job, I thought, that was the job I wanted. That was my plan. Comedy.

I think the idea of doing a live audience taped show every week and just the rush of that would be a dream. I would love to do that.

Hosting a game show is quite interactive and non-fictional shows are a part of entertainment.

Every show is your last show. That's my philosophy.

It was hard to sing like how I wanted to because playing live I had to just be at the top of my lungs all the time, and it made me sound like I had a really bad cold or something.

If your body is not in shape to sing [from the diaphragm] you will push and push but keep falling back on your throat to make the sound. This will ruin your voice.

The nice thing about live performance is that I've never, ever been let down. Partly I'm lucky that my audience self-selects itself. Generally they know what they're in for, and generally we all just like each other and get along. But I always find one or two or a dozen really interesting people in the audience who make the show different. And that's one of the things I really like about performing.

One take, so you better be ready and you better be good. One take and that was it. It was something that was spontaneous. Both Sid Caesar and Jackie Gleason was like that as well.

I try not to talk during the day when I have a show that night. My voice is my instrument, just like a saxophonist's instrument is his saxophone, plus also his voice, if he's the one between tunes that makes announcements.

If I go three days without vocalizing, the voice is gone.

Commitment is what your boss needs you to have. Choice is what you need to have.

I've also learned to only write songs and melodies that really work for my voice and that I won't have issues doing live. Because you can get really, really comfortable in the comping process: out of five takes, maybe one of those high notes that you struggled to do, nailed it, and then live you're having that challenge of really having to recreate that.

I lost my voice. I'd never had to cancel a show before and I had to walk around with a pad and a pen, writing things down.

Of course, the age-old tradition that a star must appear even if he or she is practically dying is an excellent one, but it can be carried too far. I one played a performance of The Knight of the Burning Pestle with a temperature of 103 and gave sixteen members of the company mumps, thereby closing the play and throwing everybody out of work. There may be a moral lurking somewhere in this, but I cannot for the life of me discover what it is.

Performing to me is the most vital, most important. It's my favorite part of all of it. I just want to be on stage.