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.
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?
You 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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah. I’m amateurish. I can play enough to write a song, or strum on a little guitar to write out a song. But, I don’t play well at all. I wouldn’t even attempt for a second to play in public.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
I don’t care what studio I’m in, I don’t care what producers is producing it and I don’t care what song it is because they taught me those things I feel so protected wherever I go as far as music.
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.
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.
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.
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.
