B. B. King Quotes

There's a pressure regardless of that to do a good show.

I feel like it's harder to perform in front of a smaller crowd sometimes still than it is a larger crowd.

We are nervous before every concert. I think we are the most nervous band in the world.

Onstage, it's more of a momentary pressure.

I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse, but every time I show up on set it still feels like the first time.

For the first time I go to La Scala, for each thing, for each rehearsal, my knees were shaking. But the audience was very fine with me.

Before every performance, I think I am about to keel over.

We are the kind of people who obsess over one word... but we have only one shot to get it right in concert. It was hard the first time I practiced with them. I was so nervous that my vocal chords were paralyzed for about a half-hour.

When you walk out onstage in front of 65,000 people, it can bring you to tears.

I'm nervous before all shows.

It's not so much that I don't enjoy playing live - that's one of the best parts of playing music - it's that it's nerve-racking with 300, 500 people watching.

I'm more comfortable performing in front of 50,000 people than five people - it's easier. When there's that many people, I feel like I'm alone. When I perform in front of only a few people, it's scary.

I enjoy performing, always, but when you're taping a gig, you've got to blank out this mass apparatus of self-consciousness that's surrounding you, this invitation to drown in self-consciousness. Otherwise you just won't be able to do anything.

I'd forget the piece just before I went out to do the concerto, the panic was too great. This was not anything that gave me pleasure. This was fulfilling somebody else's dream.

The first time I performed musically, I threw up.

I think I failed miserably on NewsRadio. I was very nervous because of the caliber of the cast - especially Dave Foley - so I think I did a terrible job.

I love pressure in a different sort of way; I enjoy the pressure of getting out and performing for the public. Being compared and judged doesn't seem quite right to me.

Auditioning is the most terrifying thing I've ever done. There must have been four or five of them where I completely froze up and walked out of the room. My palms get sweaty just thinking about it.

Auditioning is the worst.

I did the 'Tonight Show' once, and I choked up. I get intimidated.

You get more nervous in front of a lot of people. That's why, when you play a concerto, you play with a small orchestra, in some place where you don't feel that it is as important as Carnegie Hall.

I haven't been really nervous about a gig in a long time.

The most scared I'd ever been was the first time I sang at a rugby match, Australia versus New Zealand, in front of one hundred thousand people. I had a panic attack the night before because people have been booed off and never worked again... just singing one song, the national anthem.

You want to have butterflies in your stomach, because if you don't, if you walk out onstage complacent, that's not a good thing.

I'm never comfortable at theatre opening nights. If it's my own production I'm too wound up to be able to enjoy the performance and too wary to enjoy the event as a social occasion.