Bill Medley

“It's the audiences that inspire me to keep going. I feel that we all grew up together. The majority now are the people who were raised on the music in the Sixties.”

“The Righteous Brothers got so heavy because of the dramatic hit records like 'Lovin' Feelin.' Bobby and I just felt like we were a couple of Orange County guys who were just having a great time singing rock n' roll, and then, boy, it became something else.”

“Passion: It's what separates a singer from an entertainer. I hope I have passion for my music, my family, and my friends until they start shoveling dirt on my face.”

“I had fans, and the industry and everybody saying, 'Keep the Righteous Brothers going; keep the music alive,' and I really didn't want to do that. I had sung with a couple of guys who would supposedly be really good Bobby Hatfields, and I thought, 'Oh geez, it's really anti-climatic.'”

“It was so odd to have young kids singing 'Lovin' Feelin' because they knew it from 'Top Gun.'”

“The Righteous Brothers were purely rhythm and blues, black music.”

“Every so often, if I'm in a melancholy mood, I'll sing 'Desperado' in my shows. I'll sit alone at the piano and play it as a solo. The song feels like an old friend - except now it's saying, 'You were a desperado once, but you worked your way out of it.'”

“The reason I still love performing is that people my age, a little younger and a little older, show up to relive that thing that made them so happy all those years ago. And as long as they show up, I'll keep on keepin' on till I keel over.”

“The friendship I had with Elvis began to take shape in 1968 when I was recording in Memphis. I'd record during the day, and Elvis would send one of his guys over to bring me to Graceland at night. Everything you've heard about Graceland during Elvis's glory days is true and then some.”

“The emotion of a song's lyrics has always been what grabs me deeply.”

“I'm a Santa Ana boy from 1940 to all my life. And Santa Ana was different only in the fact that Orange County was just small. Hell, I used to ride my motorcycle through the orange groves, and now it's tracts of homes.”

“Throughout our career, people thought Bobby and I disliked each other. That's not true, but our relationship was very complicated. We were like brothers - and brothers don't always see eye to eye.”

“For Bobby and I to sing R&B and sound black was probably the stupidest thing we could do. White radio stations wouldn't play us because they thought we were black. Black stations wouldn't play us because they thought we were white. Any time you break ground, you go against the grain.”

“Opening for The Beatles in San Francisco at the Cow Palace was great. It was terrific fun to do. The tour itself, I must say, wasn't a whole lot of fun, artistically. It was just more kind of interesting.”

“There were moments that Bobby and I would come offstage after performing in front of 20,000 people and say, 'Wow, how did that happen?' It's been a blessed life.”

“I'm kind of a nervous guy. I know on television I look like I'm half asleep, but inside I'm going about 100 miles an hour.”