Barry McGuire Quotes

In the '80s, the way radio was programmed, if you didn't have a hit record you weren't going to be able to make any more records. That was it, period.

Back in the day, if someone at the record label didn't care or like your music, it never got to the public. It just got shelved.

There are a lot of dynamics and a lot of politics that go into records and getting played on the radio.

I don't make music for the radio. And when I was being played on the radio a lot, I didn't.

I never do releases to try and make or break some contemporary band.

I think when you put a new record out, everyone has a song or two that they feel people will be moved by so much that radio will be forced to play it.

Recently, I've been working on anew album of material, which should be out in the new Millennium. I'm not sure which song will be put out as a single, but I'm still hoping to get another record in the charts.

I hate record labels. They think they know everything. I want to hear them try to sing it.

The problem that I have is with the music business. For some reason it seems almost impossible to get anything, any music, released which includes improvisation or soloing.

Any album that I ever put out I'm going to send it to country radio first.

I'd love to get played on the radio, but it just doesn't happen.

I'm a commercial-minded songwriter. I'm here to make a living and be on the radio.

Nothing is more frustrating to me than putting a song on an album and regret putting it on there. I'm excited that there are no songs on 'Tailgates & Tanlines' that I'm iffy about.

The problem was the journalists who also did not understand much of my music, but they wrote about it. I think you fell into the usual trap laid out by parts of the press and other writers: that the poor musician has always to fight the evil companies and managers.

I don't even know what words to use to talk about the music industry anymore. But the business has changed a lot - the methods of releasing music.

If you want to put out a million CDs and sell them and get them played on the radio, and even videos, or whatever, if that still exists, that kind of muscle can only come from a label like Columbia.

I listen to my old records and I think, 'How did I ever get on the radio?'

I love hooks, but getting radio airplay has never been a concern to me while I'm writing. That would be a very stifling and imprisoning way of writing music.

I want to be in control of how my music is released and how I create it. What people don't talk about when they talk about major labels is how many artists get dropped or funding gets dropped when they don't recoup quick enough.

The success of 'Take Me To Church,' I never imagined it. I never imagined that it would work on radio, that it would find its way onto the charts, even at home and certainly not in America.

When you finish a song, your first thought is going to be, 'Is this song a hit?' I hate that we think that way, because it kind of takes a little bit of the meaning out of the songs that are being written, but you're definitely going to think, 'Can this song be put on the radio?'

I want to sell music, and I want radio to play my songs.

I just want to keep saturating the market and radio with as many hit records as I can.

I'm wide open and will entertain anything anybody has to say, but if it's MTV and radio, well, they're great things, but can't be the only thing. I don't know that it would work even for the Beatles.

I went to a radio station on Long Island in 1982, and thank goodness for me, it was so new that there was no receptionist. So the DJ opened up his booth, and took my tape and listened to it and thought it was a hit song.