Jesse Owens Quotes

If I were to do this over I'd play a lot more shows before I made a record.

I've never been in a band, but I've hung out with a lot of musicians and helped them with their shows. It's something that I'm really drawn to.

We want people to see us live before we continue on and call ourselves recording artists.

None of us wanted to be the bass player. In our minds he was the fat guy who always played at the back.

If you had a successful TV show, people wanted to see you live. Promoters had had practice with pop groups, and 'Python' achieved a similar status. We also had lots of rock star fans - George Harrison, Pink Floyd, Robert Plant. Promoters saw that and liked it.

But I'm tone deaf - window-shattering tone deaf. I can't sing for the life of me. I can't sing or dance, so no remake of 'Grease' for me!

My youngest daughter sings. She's going to be very good. She's graduated from Music School and she's been working down around and getting her feet wet, you know. I had her out with me for a year just showing her the ropes a little bit, but she's going to be all right.

SDC has a great reputation for putting live music on stage.

In a way, Jersey really supports rock, maybe more than New York City and Long Island. I know plenty of bands that tour and do much better at Starland or other clubs in New Jersey than others in the tri-state area.

You never get tired of the buzz of touring.

Not everyone deserves to be a musician, you get lucky enough to be one.

If you can go out with your live show and turn people on to that, where you have that fan base that's religious and they're going to come see you when you're in that town, once your radio success is gone and you're not a mainstream guy anymore you can still go out and play your shows.

Canada can be tough for urban music.

We just finished making a record. Everybody wants to play shows, so we're going to after that.

When I was a young man, I was a baritone, very far from possessing the whole range of the tenor then.

I'd like to be a jazz singer, but I couldn't possibly do it; nobody would want me, anyway.

No, I'm sure that there's a lot of L.A. bands out there.

Rhythm and blues started even before phonograph records were being produced because black people entertained themselves. It wasn't done for money. It was done for entertainment. Most white people didn't know anything about this because prejudice kept them from ever seeing what was going on.

There are a lot of singers who cannot sing to save their lives. We have to accept it, but thank God there is such a thing as live shows. It's only when people are faced with live shows that the world gets to know how good or how bad they are.

I remember at the age of, and I'll say this, 10 and a half, 11, I had a natural boy soprano.

People have said I played some pretty amazing gigs in the seventies, but in all honesty, I probably played one good show in three.

I'm not dissatisfied with my place in it rock 'n' roll.

I did perform in punk bands, but it was more about shouting and snarling than about any beautiful music. I enjoyed singing in 'The Golden Circle' - I've never sung in a movie before.

Oh, you wouldn't want to hear me sing.

I never thought of myself as a performer or songwriter or singer.