It’s something that, songwriters just write songs. It’s like an artist that paints. They paint what they feel. It’s not, it’s not about how many of these painting I’ll sell it’s just how they feel at the moment. And that’s how I wrote “Stand By Me”.
Most black singers like to slow the word down and, and go directly to your heart. They’re not interested in your ears, we just want to go directly to your heart.
The Phil Spector that I would meet has always been a nice, quiet, little guy who’s very serious about his work; obviously you can tell that because each and everything he’s ever done has always been charted.
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.
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.
Of course, the kids who had never heard of a person called Ben E. King were then aware of the name associated with the song. That gave a tremendous lift to me as an artist.
Many times I’ve gone on tours with Paul Anka. He would have someone sitting behind him to keep people from even talking to him. You were almost in a little restricted area there.
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.
If there’s anything about the business that I love and that I’m extremely happy about, is that my career started at that time and that I met some of the greatest entertainers at that time and some are still here.
If you just concentrate on what you’re doing and allow yourself to actually enjoy and let your feelings come out, whatever the tempos, whatever the rhythms, whatever the songs, 9 out of 10 times it will work.
A singer has got a different attitude, they’re they’re so whacked out they don’t know what they’re doing half the time. Singers, they don’t, they’re spoiled too.
