Columbia Records Quotes

I never was one to go into an office and write. For one thing, I had a job. I was cleaning the ashtrays and setting up the studios at Columbia for a couple of years and working every other week down in the Gulf of Mexico flying helicopters. I didn't really get to just write songs for about five years.

I've always felt I struck out with Doris Day. Her son, Terry Melcher, was a producer I worked for at Columbia, and one day, he asked me to go to her house to play piano on a song she was doing. So I get there, and she has about 30 dogs running around the place - turns out she's a dog rescuer.

I want to be the president of Columbia Records, maybe C.E.O. - kind of like L.A. Reid.

When I was 13, I used to go to a jazz club. The owner of the club became my first business manager. She was very gutsy and had a lot of friends, one of whom happened to be the head of jazz at Columbia at the time. That's how it all began.

There's a lot of unreleased blues stuff I did with the Apollo Theater musicians, and there was of experimenting going on for me in the mid-'60s in that studio, which I think frustrated Columbia.

Before I joined The Beach Boys, I was working at Columbia Records as a producer, and saw The Byrds come in and do their first overdub before Terry even met them.

There will be a Jussie Smollett album. I signed to Columbia. So, darling, I'm label mates with Beyonce and Adele and Barbra Streisand.

Even to be flown out to New York was mind boggling for me, and signing with Columbia was great because they really understood my vision. Of all the labels that I met, they were the ones that really seemed to understand that I was really about the music, the writing, and the lyrics, so it was really fulfilling to sign with them.

Rick Rubin came to my concert in Orange County, Calif. I believe this was, like, '83 when he first came and listened to the show. And then afterwards, I went in the dressing room and sat and talked to him.

I belonged to the Columbia Record Club, and that's where my records came from. For some reason, I was in the 'jazz' category. I got Benny Goodman records and Miles Davis, J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding, and that kind of stuff. I really was not a jazz guy at all, but I knew some of those names.

I had been on the road for a long time and was not really getting anywhere. Bob Johnston, a friend of mine, had taken over Columbia in Nashville. He asked me if I wanted to come down. I did - thank God I did.

I got an invitation to go to the Olympic trials. And in the same week, I got a telegram from a... big executive at Columbia Records.

Columbia was a wonderful label for me. Wonderful. The records I made there garnered me an audience. I won a number of polls during the years that I was at Columbia. The Downbeat Jazz Poll. Leonard Feather, who was a huge critic back in the day, different polls that he had. The Playboy poll, a number of polls. So the music was great.

I was the only person I'd ever met who had a record contract. None of the E Street Band, as far as I know, had been on an airplane until Columbia sent us to Los Angeles.

At that time, I was signed to Columbia Records as an Independent Producer. I spent many weeks forming, auditioning, rehearsing and recording demos for Kenny, who was finally signed to Columbia Records.

I was talking to different labels: Columbia, RCA, Epic. I decided not to sign with Epic even after L.A. Reid offered me a crazy deal.