Buzz Osborne Quotes

For the first six years of my career I was independent. I got on to a major and did my thing there. I had platinum and gold records and all that.

You know, I didn't have enough money to quit my day job... the myth of the major label deal. Nowadays, you have a tour bus and a stylist and all this stuff. But back then, no way.

I enjoy touring. I enjoy recording the music, I enjoy dreaming it and I enjoy performing it. I also definitely enjoy selling it, because I like to eat.

I started touring a little bit in 1973 in support of a record I made for an independent label. In 1975, when I signed with Warner Bros., where I remained happily ensconced for the next 24 years, my touring activity increased considerably.

To me, being in the big time is not that big of a deal. I've been there; I know what it is. It's exciting, but it's also a lot of work and pressure. I love sort of flying under the radar where we can play theaters and sell CD's on the Internet, and it's really kind of a cool time.

People in the music business say don't make too many records because they'll compete against one another.

A lot of very popular mainstream artists are products of record companies and marketing companies, and any time anyone can stand outside of that, that's interesting.

Touring and putting out records is fun and cool, but I've been doing it for a long time.

Nowadays, it's like two different arenas, recording and touring. When I started way back in the day, doing both was nothing, you didn't have to think about it, the road and recording.

I really want to put the emphasis on creating music. I want to cut a record. I want to start going on tour.

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

So there was a way for you to get promoted and survive as an artist without worrying about AM radio hits.

In those days it was pretty cut and dry. If you had a record company believing in you enough to cut an album then you had better have the ability to work the album on the road.

That whole lifestyle - make a record, do a tour: I know how to do that. It doesn't interest me.

Being a recording artist, selling music, selling concerts out, having a reality show, starting film; it's great, it's beautiful.

I've never worried about how a new release will be received. I simply try to do the best I can and leave the rest to the gods. The music industry in those terms is something I loathe and detest. It conjures up images of a gigantic factory spewing out parts of the machine.

Playing shows and making records keeps been getting easier and more fun.

Yes; my brother Bobby used to distribute records at King Records. I had a job there, too, packing records up and shipping them off. But I always wanted to play sessions at Stax, so I figured out a way to do it.

I would be a huge hypocrite if I didn't tell you that at one time in my life I thought the way that you made music was you got on a major label and you got famous.

This is truly a blessing. Breyon Prescott, Peter Edge and Tom Corson believe in me and have introduced me to a home that also believes and knows exactly what to do with the type of music I'm doing.

I was actually signed at a very young age - I was 12 - and one thing led to another, and I ended up in a mutual split from the label. But it was probably the best thing that could have ever happened, because I was able to kind of leave the industry side of it for a minute and focus on the independent side.

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

I started singing when I was 18 and landed my first record deal with RCA when I was 26 after a lot of grafting singing in pubs and clubs.

Being my own boss and working inside an industry that's not really an industry, I need to keep busy and keep working. The only way to make money in music - unless you're managing someone - is to tour, and even that depends on where you are at.

I've been through the entire gamut of the music industry - I've been playing in clubs since I was 14, and I've been on Warner Bros, on Sony - I've had lots of successes and some serious times of struggle.