Tony Bennett Quotes

Even when you're right in the middle of a tour and you've done 30 or 40 shows, you still get them butterflies in the stomach right before you go on stage.

My nerves before a gig got worse; I had terrible bad nerves all the time. Once we started... I was fine.

The night before a show, I don't sleep. Really. I've been doing this for 30 years, and the night before a show, I still don't sleep.

It's funny how concert dreams are such a recurring thing among musicians. It's like how everyone has that dream of their teeth falling out? Except musicians have this dream of just standing onstage and there being all these people out there, and for some reason, the song isn't starting.

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 feel nervous before performing in live concerts, but it does not last more than five minutes.

The first time on stage is such a blur to me. I remember how it felt more than anything. I remember everything about the day before I went on stage - what I ate, the first person I met in the club, how I felt beforehand - but the actual being on stage is a total blur.

I love to be nervous before a scene.

You're in front of an audience, but you're playing for a camera. There's this huge adrenaline rush, because you know that besides the audience in the studio, there are millions of people watching at home.

People don't know this, but I'm going through a lot every time I walk on stage, which is part of doing theater. That's why it's so addictive, I must say.

Performing live in front of an audience is such a matter of will - all of those things you can do just fine in your basement, suddenly you have to do them in front of hundreds or thousands of people, and it becomes a different matter entirely.

I still get really nervous, though, before each performance. It kind of hits about 15 minutes before we go onstage - sometimes I don't even want to go on. But once I'm onstage I'm fine.

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.

There's some anxiety the 30 minutes before the show starts. But once you step on stage and face the people, everything goes away, and you have fun and enjoy the audience.

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

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

I just have this fear that I'll get on stage and there'll be that brief moment of adrenalin and I'll forget my line.

There's such an adrenaline rush for me on stage and having all these people look at you. There's an adrenaline rush from not having things written down, too.

I developed in my head that I'm never any better than my last concert or the last time I played, so it's like an audition each time. You get nervous just before going onstage. I still have that, but I think it's more like concern. You're concerned about the people - like meeting your in-laws for the first time.

I still get nervous before every performance.

I had gigged so much from the age of 11 to 20 that I got to a stage where I actually got less nervous the bigger the gig. But you need those butterflies: they make you feel alive.

I tap my fingers and cheekbones before going on stage to calm down. But nerves are necessary; if you ever lose them, it's a bad sign.

I get kinda nervous before every show.

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

But I'd say recording and playing on stage are two completely different things. Being up there in front of all those people is like jumping off a cliff into icy water. The recording process is a totally different energy.