Desmond Dekker Quotes

Artist development is something that I've been passionate about from my days at Uptown and Motown Records.

I've been in the room or watched artists walk in who don't write, and you can't figure out what they really want.

I've had offers to sign a record deal, but the people I've talked to have wanted to package me and have me meet with songwriters who've written stuff for Whitney Houston, that sort of thing. That's not at all my style.

I have friends who have a CD mastering plant in Hollywood and they are very sceptical about European record labels' understanding of digital technology.

This is a very screwed-up business. Record labels don't sign a lot of bands these days. We just want to find a home and stay there and make records and do our thing and not have to look over our shoulder.

I don't spend much time listening to the records when they're done. Usually I let go of it. Especially in the Eighties and Nineties - they were like product, almost.

I don't believe in the philosophy of stumbling across hit records.

My ambition was to be a record producer, and I had started doing that in the late '60s with my work with the MC5 and my friend Livingston Taylor.

I was never in the business of trying to put my name out there - I was really focused on music and records and being in the studio.

My function at Verve was that of a genuine producer in artists and repertoire.

Doing things in my day was simple: you either signed to a big label or you signed to a very small label, and you worked with that one, and then they eventually signed you on to a big one.

There are people who are genetically made to start record labels, and I'm not one of those people. People just have it in their blood and are good at it. Corey Rusk from Touch and Go and Ian MacKaye. These are people who have made their own labels.

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 think the record industry has gotten to be more about labels wondering what the new single is rather than labels nurturing artists. It's gotten away from making a full album of music that someone would want to listen to all the way through.

If it wasn't for the TLC story, many artists would not have smartened up, and you wouldn't have the Lil Waynes and people with their own labels.

By the time my first solo record came out, I was making a handsome living as a record producer. I had worked with the Band, Janis Joplin and all of these other artists in the Albert Grossman organization. So as my so-called solo career evolved, I never felt pressure that I had to come back and top when I might've done before.

Finally, my manager negotiated a deal where I got to produce my own records.

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.

Most of the time when people work with an artist, they don't give them what they need for the future, they give them what their last album sounded like. So it's like, 'Oh, One Republic needs a song, why don't we send them 10 that sound like 'Apologize?'

I built a reputation as a songwriter in the industry before my own hits. People were used to coming to me for songs. There were songs like 'Clown' and 'Mountains' that were my songs that I wanted to keep. But the record labels saw me as a songwriter. It was hard to get people to believe in me as an artist.

Being a pop artist or making music like a jingle or something - I don't do that.

Artists were nurtured back in the '70s. Their music was developed by the record companies.

I got all these books about, like, what you need to know to enter the entertainment industry. And I remember I sent my music to record labels, and I took these little DVDs and sent them all over the place. And either no one got back to me or they just kept saying, 'You're too different.'

Bob Hurwitz, the president of Nonesuch, the company that releases my records, is a mentor. He taught me how to assemble a script to record an album.