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.
BEN E. KINGI still perform it in all my shows. I’ll do it as long as I’m breathing. I’m so proud it has stood the test of time.
More Ben E. King Quotes
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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?
BEN E. KING -
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.
BEN E. KING -
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.
BEN E. KING -
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. KING -
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.
BEN E. KING -
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.
BEN E. KING -
I do like what Alicia Keys and John Legend are doing. With their music, you keep your clothes on.
BEN E. KING -
And, because there was an honesty about all that was going on. It connected with the people in the street.
BEN E. KING -
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.
BEN E. KING -
I always felt I never chose music, it chose me.
BEN E. KING -
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.
BEN E. KING -
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.
BEN E. KING -
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.
BEN E. KING -
It’s a different thing when you go into a studio and you record with the intent of going somewhere and you’re marketing yourself for that direction.
BEN E. KING -
It never dawned on me at any particular time of my life that people are paid tremendous money to sing.
BEN E. KING