Latest Ben E. King Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• People abroad always tend to take what the best of what we have and come back through the back door always, say, and hit us with it. And then we wake up one day and say, I think I've heard that. Yeah, it was done by whoever, you know. So, ah, that's been one of our weaknesses we don't tend to hold on as they do there.

  Ben E. King

  Thinking, Doors, People

• 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

  Marketing, Records, Different

• I would imagine after the first recording session with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and Atlantic Records I began to realize that this is going to be like this for the rest of my life and I knew that what, what they were doing was going to be successful because with each session that we would do, it would get better and better and better, the songs would become better, the, ah, the feeling of success was there and we were all in the middle of that as well.

  Ben E. King

  Song, Successful, Feelings

• During those times like in my early years as a writer I could actually write a song in ten minutes because all of a sudden a song is writing itself, I'm just putting down words. It just seem each line that you put down flows with the other ones. It's like writing a love letter you don't think about it, it's something from the heart.

  Ben E. King

  Song, Writing, Heart

• 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

  Writing, Stand By Me, How You Feel

• I'm a songwriter. So I'm OK. But when I wrote "Stand By Me" as a song and to know that the song will probably be here for hundred and hundreds of years to come, it's great, you know. And it was just simple lyrics.

  Ben E. King

  Song, Simple, Years

• 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? It's something that, songwriters just write songs. It's like an artist that paints. They paint what they feel. It's not, it's not about how many of these painting I'll sell it's just how they feel at the moment. And that's how I wrote "Stand By Me".

  Ben E. King

  Song, Writing, Artist

• 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

  Attitude, Half, Singers

• I enjoyed singing, I loved song writing, I loved recording. All those things that involves with creating music was great.

  Ben E. King

  Song, Writing, Creating

• I don't care what studio I'm in, I don't care what producers is producing it and I don't care what song it is because they taught me those things I feel so protected wherever I go as far as music.

  Ben E. King

  Song, Taught, Care

• If you just concentrate on what you're doing and allow yourself to actually enjoy and let your feelings come out, whatever the tempos, whatever the rhythms, whatever the songs, 9 out of 10 times it will work.

  Ben E. King

  Song, Feelings, Enjoy

• Most black singers like to slow the word down and, and go directly to your heart. They're not interested in your ears, we just want to go directly to your heart.

  Ben E. King

  Heart, Black, Ears

• 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

  Fake, Different, Records

• You take a chance to do something and you realize in your heart it's either going to be the greatest thing that ever happened or the worst thing that ever happened. It won't be an in between, I almost made a hit. It will be an instant flop or an instant success.

  Ben E. King

  Heart, Chance, Realizing

• 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. 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

  Country, New York, Kids