A biography for Aaron Nevillehasn’t been written yet.
“There are so many songs in my heart and in my brain. I wake up at 2 in the morning, and I have to get up and sing them. There are so many of them, it's ridiculous.”
“I feel it was just a few years ago I was running around in short pants.”
“I think St. Jude helped me achieve some miracles in my life - that's why I wear the medallion in my left ear and never take it out.”
“When I was living in the projects, I had a mop stick for my horse. I wanted to be Gene Autry or Roy Rogers, so I would ride my mop through the projects.”
“Singing is a prayer to me.”
“Doo-wop is the true music to me, man. Doo-wop was what nurtured me and grew me into who I am, and I guess even when I was in school, the teacher probably thought I had ADD or something every day, because I'd be beating on the desks, singing like the Flamingos or the Spaniels or Clyde McPhatter or somebody.”
“God is waiting for us, to forgive us all, and what is broken, he'll fix.”
“Me and my partners had been stealing cars for a while.”
“I think things happened the way they did for a reason.”
“I might see something on TV and get inspired to write about it. I can't sit down and plan to write. It has to come to me in my head like someone telling me the words.”
“When I first went out on the road with Larry Williams, there was also, like, The Coasters, The Drifters, and The Flamingos.”
“I never left doo wop.”
“But I knew if I ran I'd never be able to sing, so I had to take my punishment.”
“In New Orleans, music is part of the culture. You're raised with it, from the cradle to the grave, and all in-between.”
“You've just got to sing, do some kind of singing every day. Early mornings and cold weather can mess with that. I drink special teas with cayenne pepper, but I think you're psyching yourself out, really.”
“I was raised Catholic, but my father's people were Methodist, so we went to both churches.”
“Man, I was scared. I didn't know what to think. All of a sudden, I got a record climbing the charts, and I'm out in the streets. You know, workin' on the docks. And the first week, it sold something like 40,000 in New Orleans.”
“So I went in front of the judge, and I had my St. Jude prayer book in my pocket and my St. Jude medal. And I'm standing there and that judge said I was found guilty, so he sentenced me to what the law prescribed: one to 14 years.”
“Don Was is a friend of mine; we've done projects together over the years.”
“I write poetry on my iPhone. I've got about 100 poems on there.”