Del Shannon

“I laughed at Willie Nelson, wondering why he spends all his life on that tour bus. And I look at myself, and I'm sitting in airplanes half the time.”

“Nobody thinks mystery writers go around killing people, but they always seem to assume singers are singing about themselves, especially if you write melancholy songs like me.”

“I usually write when I'm in a great place. When I'm depressed, I don't usually write. So I take all of when I'm depressed and throw it into when I'm feeling good. Weird, I guess.”

“I eat ice cream. It's better than booze.”

“I do me, and me is my hits. I'm out there really to satisfy the people.”

“I was an outcast growing up with a bunch of Christian people. My father didn't go to church, and that was not good news if you lived right in the middle of it.”

“I saw I could rhyme words. It came simply to me. But I wrote some pretty horrible songs that I still have on tape.”

“When I was 20, I was drinking. When I was 30, I was drinking more, and at 40, way too much.”

“There were times in my career when I would try to write songs like Bob Dylan... Artists get hooked up in that. To be a follower, you lose.”

“I love to perform. But I don't like the traveling.”

“If it's a whole show of my own, I'll do more of what I think Del Shannon is. But for shows like Disneyland, I'll just do mainly hits. That's what they want to hear. I don't want to bore people. If I wanted that much to play nothing but 12 new songs, then I should go do it in a bar somewhere for peanuts.”