J. D. Souther Quotes

Bob Dylan did the first really long record - Like A Rolling Stone - I think it was four minutes.

What we admit to is being a rock n' roll band. From day one, I was a big Chuck Berry fan.

'She's Dynamite' was a 100 years ago, and I recorded that song because the company thought that it was a great song and it was hot. That was the beginning of rock n' roll, and I guess they thought it would be a BB King version of rock n' roll.

I really consider myself fortunate to have been of age during the musical revolution that came in the form of the Beatles. People don't realize that previous to the Beatles, there really was no such thing as an album artist. People made singles. Then they would put a bunch of those singles together and call it an album. And that was it.

I've never tried to achieve anything. I achieved everything I wanted to achieve by being in the Rolling Stones and making records.

Elvis' early music has drama because as he sang he was escaping limits.

The Beatles had just come out, and everybody had a band. It was incredible competition out there.

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.

Interestingly, songs used to be short, then they became longer, and now they're getting shorter.

You know, Neil Young is singing Rock n' roll will never die, and Neil never rocked and rolled in his life. I mean, he rocked, but he didn't roll. He has got no swing in him.

The release of 'Chinese Democracy' marks a historic moment in rock n' roll.

One of the mistakes I made was believing that the rock n' roll genre as a genre was much more free than the whole pop or R&B scene.

I was born at the beginning of rock and roll. I got to experience the entire evolution of popular rock and roll music even before it started.

Bob Dylan's first couple of records in the 60's weren't considered cover records, but he only wrote one or two original songs on each album.

The whole American pop culture started in Philadelphia with 'American Bandstand' and the music that came out of that city.

Growing up, I never listened to English music. I was more into Motown, as well as early rock n' roll like Chuck Berry and Little Richard.

The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Phil Spector. Those were my idols.

The Beach Boys have always been a part of the '60s spectrum, with The Beatles and that kind of thing. They were a part of the music business like everyone else. And they did quite well as a singing group, and I finished a lot of good records, and I'm very proud of them.

For better or worse, we have evolved for sure, but we've also maintained a certain core about who we are, which is we were raised on late '50s and early '60s rock n' roll and R&B, and you can always hear that throughout. And that's just always been who we were. As much as we've evolved, that's stayed the same.

I remember having a lot of Josh White albums. Johnny Cash. Elvis. I loved the Coasters.

I just love that whole Brill Building era. I will always regret not being there. That's where I belong.

We've always been just an American rock n' roll band.

I'm definitely trying to make longer songs, but if it's short and good, I'm not going to do anything about it.

I don't want to be the cranky old guy, but a lot of critics are too forgiving of mediocre artists. When you see these 'American Idol' people on the cover of 'Rolling Stone' being written about as serious artists, there's something wrong with that. You can erase them from the history of rock n' roll, and you wouldn't notice.

I never liked jazz or anything else. Early rock n' roll - that was music to me. Everything else was boring.