Music Stardom Quotes

Record labels and producers are not looking to change you: they are looking to make a star. And what they might think is a star may not be you.

How lucky can one guy get? I was a runaway, and then I was in one of the biggest bands in the world. I've sold out every arena. I've sold millions and millions of records.

None of my heroes were big rock stars, and I thought, 'This isn't how it's meant to be.' It wasn't about making music so much as selling it.

Winning 'American Idol' really anoints you the opportunity to have a great career; it does not anoint you a career.

I think - I honestly think that my story is not 100 percent that unique. I think that I'm - just the whole rock star part kind of throws an interesting twist on it.

I'd love to have a hit record. I don't believe anyone that says they wouldn't like that.

I refuse to age disgracefully in rock 'n' roll.

The cutthroat avenues of rock 'n' roll, I am fed up with. I don't want anything to do with it.

I wanted to have the adoration of John Lennon but have the anonymity of Ringo Starr. I didn't want to be a frontman. I just wanted to be back there and still be a rock and roll star at the same time.

I'll never take any credit for Lady Gaga or Katy Perry's success. But I knew within a month that Gaga was going to be huge.

I've always wanted to have one of those hits on the radio, but we haven't really been able to crack that code.

I never dreamed of being a pop star when I was a child.

The stuff I write I'm very proud of, but I'm smart enough to know I'll never get on the cover of 'Rolling Stone' next to Elvis Costello.

The cliche of what a rock star is - there's something elitist about it. I never related to that. I'm an entertainer. I think of it as, you're performing for people. It's not a self-glorification thing.

I just want to make music, I don't want people to talk about me. All I've ever wanted to do was sing. I don't want to be a celebrity. I don't want to be in people's faces, you know, constantly on covers of magazine that I haven't even known I'm on.

Part of being a pop star is image. I'm told by many of my female fans that I was the poster on their bedroom walls. But if I only had that - the image and the beauty and the curly locks - I would have been a 'normal' pop star, one who comes and goes after one hit record.

Back then I thought if you cut a record, you were automatically a star.

If I could sell 500 million records every time, it would be great. But I've also had the luxury experience of having it when I was a teenager, in a very kind of model version of it.

At the end of the day, there's only a few major stars in the music business, and then there's all these people that are aspiring to be that.

There's something extraordinary about selling millions and millions of albums.

I won't be a rock star. I will be a legend.

I never considered myself like a pop musician or rock star, because that didn't really exist when I started.

It was pretty frightening because as we all know, when large, famous groups breakup, a lot of the members don't survive in solo careers.

That was everything to me as a kid. When I'd see someone on MTV, it was like, 'Wow, they're the real deal.'

I remember when I was a kid, if you had your name on a piece of vinyl, man, you were, like, in the halls of Valhalla; all of sudden, you were hanging out with Odin and being at the table of the gods. You were the real deal; you weren't some guy struggling in a garage somewhere.