B. B. King Quotes

I am the architect of rock n' roll. I have to be a fan of all its forms.

No I.D. executive-produced 'Under Pressure' and helped me find the Logic sound that's evolving every day.

I didn't want to be a solo Westlife - covers and ballads - and the reason I signed with Capitol Records was because they wanted me to write songs myself. It was pretty scary, but they put me in a studio in Nashville with some new songwriters, and the results were pretty good.

Guys like Otis Blackwell and Bobby Darin, and all the guys who were writing songs for Elvis at the time, just hanging around, writing songs, talking about music.

They wanted to start recording rock 'n roll, and thought I had the right voice.

Pop songs are not as graceful as they used to be. Performers today haven't gone through the regimen of learning how to write. And of course, everyone wants to own copyrights.

'I'm Sorry' was one of the first songs to come out of Nashville using strings.

I'm not going to do the Ben Harper house record or the Ben Harper drum 'n' bass record.

I think it had something to do with my love of music, especially rock music.

We were definitely new to the whole music thing. The first album was a real collaborative effort between us, the writers, and the A&R people at Columbia Records. We really worked to find out what our sound was.

When I first started, the very first body of music I made when I got signed to Atlantic were songs with titles like 'Unify' and 'You're Special.' And there's this song that reminds me of Meghan Trainor that I wrote, about a woman's body and not conforming, when I first started in music.

In 1952, Muddy cut the song 'Rollin' Stone.' It was a nationwide success, and the song echoes down through rock n' roll history. Bob Dylan cut a tribute by the same name, an English band decided to call themselves the Rolling Stones, and the magazine that first embraced music as a serious cultural phenomenon was itself called 'Rolling Stone.'

It is immensely enjoyable to work for an album because there's a lot more creative freedom. In films sometimes, all that the makers care about is making the music commercially appealing.

I wrote songs with the guys from Air Supply for their record... So I was just writing songs.

I think my legacy should be that when I started in show business, there wasn't no such thing as rock n' roll. When I started with 'Tutti Frutti,' that's when rock really started rocking.

What we learned quite early on is what was really important to early British pop that we produced-and this is where we were distinct from almost everybody else in this respect-is that it had to reflect exactly what the audience wanted us to say.

I had to make a drastic change at Sun Records and I didn't really appreciate country music until I went there.

I wouldn't mind working with Queens of the Stone Age, doing some guitar stuff on that. Even Arctic Monkeys. I'd like to do be a bit of guitar with them guys. I'll play on anyone's record to be honest with you.

The very first time I ever heard anything of mine on the radio, I was in New Jersey, and I was in my teens. I did my first record, which was an old standard called 'My Mother's Eyes.' It was the old Georgie Jessel theme. I heard it on local radio out of Newark. And it was very exciting!

I am a lover of all sorts of different music. I love blues and every piece of music that I have listened to has become an influence.

It was the early days of Rock 'n' Roll in this country. We were all struggling to learn music, it might be Country, Jazz, Classical, Blues or even Rock 'n' Roll.

In country music the lyric is important and the melodies get a little more complex all the time, and you hear marvelous new singers who are interested in writing and interpreting a lyric and in all form of popular music.

As a producer, I'm trying to challenge myself to just make something that is of a professional quality - not necessarily pop music, but maybe in the sense that Nine Inch Nails is professional quality.

I have been recording for five decades now.

When I learned to play music, I was listening to blues music. And all the blues music I liked was super simple and stripped down. And then all the hip hop I liked was super simple and stripped down and we always heard that connection.