When I got involved with The Five Crowns who later became The Drifters, and we got this hit record, I still was looking at this as kind of a fun thing.
One of the hardest things in the world is to perform on record and get someone to enjoy and feel what you’re doing. It’s unlike, like TV you can, you can fake it with the face and the crying and the bits. Recording is completely different.
There was no, there was no in between. And when I got to New York all the other musics that’s in the world just came into my head whether it was the classics, jazz, I never knew what jazz was about all, had heard anything about jazz.
I think that the song, the song “Stand By Me” is one of those songs that… and someone asked me, what was you thinking about or what was you feeling about?
In New York, I was excited about the music in New York because the only music that I was more or less involved with in the South was either country and western or hillbilly music as we used to call it when I was a kid and, ah, gospel.
You’re writing it is how you feel. And when you’re finished you put your signature on it and you mail it off and that’s it. And that’s how “Stand By Me” was really.
Those things don’t happen today. I feel sorry for the kids in the industry today. They have on sunglasses, eat caviar in jet planes, but they’ll never know the true feeling that we did.
When the night has come and the land is dark and the moon is the only light we see. No, I won’t be afraid, no, I won’t be afraid, just as long as you stand, stand by me.
One minute we can be in a small club, the next minute we can be in a coliseum, and the next minute we can be in a small auditorium. It varies, depending on the promoter, the budget, and the travelling distance.
If the sky that we look upon should tumble and fall. Or the mountain should crumble to the sea. I won’t cry, no I won’t shed a tear, just as long as you stand by me.
