A Quote by Boz Scaggs
I felt that, in retrospect, there was a time in the late Seventies, after I had a string of hits and successes, as a performer and a recording artist, that I wasn't saying anything.
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Being a performer and recording artist and playing 'World of Warcraft' - that's a pretty time-intensive combination.
I've never been the big recording star I'd love to be some day. I've had lots of hits off and on through the years but I've never had the success of other artists - one hit after another back-to-back-to-back and big hits, where every song is going to be number one. I'm not greedy or nothing. I just want everything. Is there something wrong with that?
I have always thought of myself as a performer first and way down the line as a recording artist.
When I moved to the East Village in the late seventies, I wanted to be a street performer, so I practiced daily. I never did work up the skills or the courage to perform on the street, though.
The absolute negative, the ultimate saying of no to the world, when it is just too late. And always the subtle conviction that if you had said No a moment earlier, it would none of it have happened. But the saying of no comes too late by a little. You are always a little too late in saying it.
At first all I wanted to be was famous; then I realized that fame had nothing to do with talent. I felt that I didn't do anything quite well enough, that I was one of those people who was famous but not very talented. So I said, okay, I'll be the Dinah Shore of the Seventies, on TV all the time but nobody quite knows why.
I felt about life and the way I felt about my children was so deep and profound. It was the first time I'd felt anything like that. I knew as an artist that it was going to make a huge difference in everything that I did.
I knew what I wanted to do, which was to become a recording artist, so I definitely felt like I had a calling. The performing part was the part that I wasn't sure about.
I didn't want to admit that I was a performer. A performer meant spotlights - a performer had connotations of theater. I would have preferred agent to performer.
The transition from fan to performer to recording artist, for me, was like learning how to dive... and each board got higher and higher.
At school I pretended I had a normal life, but I felt lonely all the time and different from everyone else. I never felt like I fit in, and I wasn't allowed to participate in after-school activities, go to sports events or parties or date boys. Many times I had to make up stories about why I couldn't do anything with my classmates.
You need a string of successes behind you to buoy that self-image; otherwise, you have a terribly negative attitude about yourself and it is very unlikely you are going to succeed at anything.
Pop was initially ignored as a moneymaker by the recording industry. In the seventies they were still relying on Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett for their big hits. You know, most of the budget for the record companies in those days went to the classical department - and those were big budget albums.
The fact is that the two years or so after 9/11 were a terrible time in America – a time of political exploitation and intimidation, culminating in the deliberate misleading of the nation into the invasion of Iraq. It’s probably worth pointing out that I’m not saying anything now that I wasn’t saying in real time back then, when Bush had a sky-high approval rating and any criticism was denounced as treason. And there’s nothing I’ve done in my life of which I’m more proud.
I blacked out my childhood after a string of traumatic events in my late adolescence.
I think in my late 20s, I was starting to enter that realm of complacency, which is the most terrifying place I can imagine as an artist. I felt time creeping up on me.
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