Eric Carmen

“By the time 1997 had rolled around, I had been in the music business for all my life, from the age of 15. I started recording professionally when I was 18. I had seen how record companies work, how the business works, and truth be told, I was pretty disgusted by everything by that time.”

“There are things that you write when you're 20 and there are things that you write when you're 40 and then there are things that you write when you're old.”

“In Nashville, good guitar players are a dime a dozen.”

“If you want to know more about who I am, just listen to my music.”

“Democratic foursomes don't work in the '70s like they did in the '60s, when there were fewer musical directions.”

“Over thirty-plus years, a certain myth has grown up around the band. And the last thing I ever wanted to do was put us on a stage somewhere, in less than the best circumstances, and pop the bubble, have the fans come in and say, 'Gee, they weren't that good.' It's your responsibility to give them something to be excited about.”

“Motley Crue recorded 'Tonight' and it's great fun to hear other people do my stuff. The only problem with it is it's so damn hard to play.”

“Making records is hard work.”

“When I was in the studio doing 'Hungry Eyes,' we had to make it an '80s record, but we wanted it to feel like the '60s.”

“It's the duty of every generation to find music their parents hate.”

“Our audiences were always the most bizarre mix. You'd have a thousand screaming girls in the front of the stage and then ten very serious rock critics in the back of the room going, 'Uh-huh, I think we understand this.'”

“When the second album came out, everybody gravitated immediately to the three and a half minute rock tunes and ignored the ballads. They thought all the Raspberries were was players of high-energy rock songs.”

“Soundtracks are made all the time that die horrible deaths - even soundtracks for popular movies.”

“I've had the great luxury in my career to be so successful as a songwriter that I didn't have the desperate need to have material to tour behind. It took a lot of pressure off me.”

“I noticed that on the Beach Boys' 'Pet Sounds' record they could get away with racy lyrics like that because of how they looked and the melodic way they sang the suggestive stuff. They slid it by the censors.”

“Our aim was to be playable on both AM and FM radio - something no one had done in a while.”

“My song from 'Footloose,' 'Almost Paradise,' went number 1 dislodging Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' from that spot.”

“It was easy for people to be derisive about our music because they saw what we were doing as retro. But we were like barbarians trying to crash the gates of the bloated progressive rock that we despised.”

“I've never been one of those 'quantity' guys. I'm not one of those guys who puts out a record every year whether it's any good or not.”

“In the beginning, we were a real good, straight rock 'n' roll band. We were writing quality tunes.”