Paul Shaffer Quotes

I grew up loving classic rock music - The Beatles, The Rolling Stones - and then one day I heard 'Baby One More Time' on the radio and I thought 'What is this?' I was eight and it changed my life.

As a touring musician over the last 15 years, before streaming and iPods, you had to listen to terrestrial radio wherever you were. That's always been my way of connecting to a location. Turn on the radio, search through the dial.

I essentially grew up listening to Radio 1, the chart show in particular. It was a routine, as for many young people. Every Sunday, I waited patiently to be told who was on top.

I can't point to a single person or incident that changed my life, but the recognition that there is a certain world order, has been consequential. It has empowered me to do things my way. I found an inner truth by which I abide.

Whatever had been on the radio in the '60s; I mean we were always listening to the radio.

I could do one show after another in China for the rest of my life and still die ignorant. There's a lot of places left to go.

What my first son James did was allow me to care for something in this world when I couldn't care for myself. James saved my life.

Let me say this on a personal note. Without the United States of America, I would in all probably not be able to stand here before you today.

I live in New York and I love it, because it doesn't make me feel like my life is always just about acting and that world of acting. I don't have expectations.

Because Chicago was to radio what Hollywood was to films and Broadway was to the theatre: it was the hub of radio.

My input for the first 16, 17 years of my life was AM radio, FM radio - pretty mainstream stuff. Rolling Stone was probably as edgy as it got.

Hordes of young girls never copied my hairdos or the way I talk or the way I dress. I have, therefore, never had to go through the stress of perpetuating an image that's often the equivalent of one particular song that forever freezes a precise moment of one's youth.

When I was a small boy, 10, 11, 12, probably somewhere around there, when I first heard a blues song on the radio, it was a jolt of electricity. It grabbed me by the throat, it made me shiver. And I knew from that moment that this was for me and this would be with me for the rest of my life.

I had to be at least 8 or 9; I was listening to everything on the radio. You name it, I heard every song.

Where I grew up, in the Detroit area, there was a really good station. Sometimes you would hear songs for the first time on the radio, and if a really special song came on, somebody would turn it up, and everybody would just stop talking.

I'm not into bands for the sake of being into bands. I've grown past that. There was a time in my life when I was that guy.

I always loved music and would listen to the radio and watch out for new stuff. When I was about nine or ten, I would go around to me friend's house on a Sunday when the top twenty was broadcast on the radio at 6 P.M., and we would tape it on a cassette, and then we would take turns in sharing it over the next week.

Apple has the radio stations, so I go R&B in the morning, and then I'll go with some hip-hop before the game. But after the game, it's more meditation music. It's not artists; it's more whatever is being played.

I spent my teens in northern California listening to KALX, KUSF, and KFJC, finding people that changed my life.

I had a little radio, and I listened to music in my bedroom when I was supposed to be sleeping. I was probably 6 or 7 years old, and I loved the DJs who would come on and talk about the artists and the songs they were singing, and they gave away prizes. I was like, 'This is a cool job!'

My cousin used to make fun of me for liking stuff like C+C Music Factory. I didn't have any tapes; I just liked their song on the radio. We liked that because that was what we had access to.

In America, kids would go to college and get out and buy a second-hand car and go across the country and discover America. I never did that; I went from New York to Paris, and New York was my America.

I didn't even have a record player as a kid, so everything was down to radio.

As you get older you lose interest in what you hear on the radio. But you can't be like that, you have to enjoy what's going on.

When I was growing up, I could tell you everything about the three radio stations in Nashville. My 12- and 14-year-olds can't tell me one radio station here but can tell me three on Sirius.