Top 60 Quotes & Sayings by Joe Cocker

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English musician Joe Cocker.

Last updated on April 15, 2025.

John Robert "Joe" Cocker was an English singer known for his gritty, bluesy voice and dynamic stage performances that featured expressive body movements. Most of his best known singles were covers of songs by other artists, though he composed a number of his own songs for most of his albums as well, often in conjunction with songwriting partner Chris Stainton.

English - Musician | May 20, 1944 - December 22, 2014

Source: Wikipedia

There are people who'll dismiss me as 'just' a singer. That's how it is, how it's always been, but just because I'm not hunched over a piece of paper with a pen in my hand doesn't mean I'm not putting in the graft.

Joe Cocker

Well, we have this place in Telluride, Colorado. It's somewhere I can just get away and relax and think.

Joe Cocker

I have one message for young musicians around the world: Stay true to your heart, believe in yourself, and work hard.

Joe Cocker

In the end, I don't think you can find soul. Soul finds you.

Joe Cocker

To be on the road, even if you're not that happy, is all right, as long as I'm pourin' me heart into it.

Joe Cocker

For me, the focus are songs, which really get the audience moving.

Joe Cocker

I had a job when I was 16 at a gas fitter, which was a bit like a pipe fitter.

Joe Cocker

A lot of times when you're young and carefree, you don't realize, when you tip over the edge, how difficult it is to climb back in.

Joe Cocker

I love songs that have a rocking and grooving feeling.

Joe Cocker

It's all a matter of hearing what I like and seeing if I can make it fit into my style.

Joe Cocker

Yeah, one of the main ways is for songs that make me want to move.

Joe Cocker

I have sung to large crowds since then, and there is a feeling that once you get over 100,000 people, you kind of lose the control element, you don't know if you are really getting through or not.

Joe Cocker

Unfortunately I was in New York when 9/11 happened.

Joe Cocker

I'm no good at breakin' off with people.

Joe Cocker

Making music, if you're a real musician, you carry on regardless in this world.

Joe Cocker

A lot of times, it's nice to open, because the heat's off you. You just go out and blast your set and say to whoever's going to finish, 'There you go.' Even though when you first start, people are drifting in, and that's kind of a bit disconcerting.

Joe Cocker

I would like to be able to do a song with Ray Charles, before we both get too old.

Joe Cocker

When I used to put an album out, I knew everyone on the charts. There weren't that many bands. Now, I couldn't even name half the new groups.

Joe Cocker

I still like the stuff from the old days: Marvin Gaye, Donnie Hathaway.

Joe Cocker

I've been touring now since about '68.

Joe Cocker

Back then, I, most rockers loved Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis... you know in the '60s.

Joe Cocker

Rock and roll came into my life when I was about 12, 13, when Little Richard and Chuck Berry had just started hitting the shores of England.

Joe Cocker

I never picked up a guitar as a kid, partly because my dad didn't want the noise in our little back-to-back in Sheffield.

Joe Cocker

I always encourage my promoter to see if we can go someplace new. And he'll go, 'OK, how about Armenia?'

Joe Cocker

I have always been a sucker for ballads, but you have to be careful these days, you can't overload people.

Joe Cocker

I like to use effects, but a lot of the time I just can't deal with these tracks with all these artificial sounds.

Joe Cocker

I think to be a good songwriter, you have to be able to play an instrument.

Joe Cocker

I used to get so carried away while I was on stage that I'd be physically damaged by the end of a concert.

Joe Cocker

God, I'm just a fat bald guy, 60 years old, singing the blues, you know?

Joe Cocker

Well, over the years, I've developed a stable of songs of which I'm known for and never get tired of singing.

Joe Cocker

It's interesting, as I said on the last tour in America, the audience actually came out, they had to have been the kind of fans who listened to my music via their parents, you know what I mean?

Joe Cocker

It's nice to get a response from the artists that I cover.

Joe Cocker

I think the only thing I would've ever been any good at was probably being a pub landlord. I've thought of that a couple of times.

Joe Cocker

'You Are So Beautiful,' I think, is probably the, you know, the strongest tune I ever did in just the simplicity in it.

Joe Cocker

My strongest audiences are in Germany and France - they stuck with me through my dark days in the '70s.

Joe Cocker

In me soul, I'm gentle.

Joe Cocker

If you're going to have a cabin fever, have a big cabin, you know.

Joe Cocker

The world is a tougher place to live in than it was back then, as we come into the computer age.

Joe Cocker

Don't go on American Idol, I think you'll spend the rest of your life living it down and I think it's getting kinda scary, isn't it?

Joe Cocker

I'm getting older; you realise you are on the countdown of what you are doing, so performing means more than it ever did to me.

Joe Cocker

Some of the songs I do once in a while that I kinda... my set list is basically like my hits, there is a good reason why they are there; people really like them.

Joe Cocker

I don't think you can live as long as I have in rock n' roll and not take a few hard knocks.

Joe Cocker

I could never deny myself bein' an artist.

Joe Cocker

People have said I played some pretty amazing gigs in the seventies, but in all honesty, I probably played one good show in three.

Joe Cocker

When I look back, I didn't take care of myself at all.

Joe Cocker

Over the years, I've worked with just about everybody.

Joe Cocker

Once you get into entertaining a quarter of a million people, it's a very weird place to be.