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.
BEN E. KINGYou take a chance to do something and you realize in your heart it’s either going to be the greatest thing that ever happened or the worst thing that ever happened. It won’t be an in between, I almost made a hit. It will be an instant flop or an instant success.
More Ben E. King Quotes
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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.
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The industry now wants to be in charge of everything.
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I do like what Alicia Keys and John Legend are doing. With their music, you keep your clothes on.
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I never even visualized for a second doing what I’m doing.
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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.
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I still think my whole career was accidental. I didn’t pursue it. I feel like I’m cheating sometimes.
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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.
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I always felt I never chose music, it chose me.
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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.
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I’m a songwriter. So I’m OK. But when I wrote “Stand By Me” as a song and to know that the song will probably be here for hundred and hundreds of years to come, it’s great, you know. And it was just simple lyrics.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It never dawned on me at any particular time of my life that people are paid tremendous money to sing.
BEN E. KING






