A Quote by John Mellencamp
There are a lot of actors who try to get records made and try to make record deals, and everybody goes, 'Ugh.' It used to be expected in the entertainment business. I mean look at Sinatra, Bing Crosby. All these guys started out as singers.
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Everybody used to say that baseball players can't dress and athletes can't dress. You know, a lot of athletes now are trying to prove everybody wrong, though there are some athletes that try too hard and try to do over-the-top things. But me, I try to be simple and just make whatever I'm wearing look good.
Sometimes I have to criticize guys to try to make it fun, I mean, I'm out there trying to bust other people. I want all these guys to do well, but when they do something stupid or don't play well, I try not to kill 'em, I try to make 'em laugh a little bit.
I mean, just like every other prominent songwriter or producer, you have the shot. You send in records and if they make it, they make it. If they get heard, they get heard. I'm not sure if you know how that circle of songwriting and producing works, but every time a big artist is working, everybody and their mother is in the studio writing records to try to get on it.
Hope and Crosby made seven 'Road' movies, starting in 1940 with 'Road to Singapore.' The movies were always about Crosby and Hope fleeing America and finding Dorothy Lamour in some exotic location. Bob's character was cocky and cowardly; Bing's character was smooth and unruffled. They were great characters - lousy, lovable guys.
Look at all of the pitchers getting six- and seven-year deals at 30, 31, and 32. You see what's going on and the money that's out there. You'd be a fool not to try to benefit from that, or at least try to get what you feel you're worth.
When I was in my formative years, I rejected Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, and Dean Martin. I now realise they were all great artists, but at the time, as a young man, you have to clear the decks.
The funny thing is that the studio that we recorded in was the same studio that Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole used to warm up their voices in before they went across the street to CBS Radio. The owner has preserved it exactly the way it was in 1925. It was such a perfect coincidence that we were doing music inspired by that stuff in that room. It was incredible.
A lot of what I do is try to watch tape and understand how guys come out of breaks - what their footwork looks like, or how they look at the top of a pass route. Guys have tendencies. I try to understand what they do, which allows me to be successful.
Everybody raps. We rap to make money. We do business. Ain't no other record company out there that sold as many records as we did.
Everybody goes to the funeral, but everybody laughs when it's funny. While entertainment is happening, that's just what it is, entertainment - until it crosses over into a whole 'nother situation. And now, me maturing, I look back at a lot of things, pushing forward, some things won't get my attention. Some things don't deserve my energy. I won't put forth so much on things, you got to focus on what's the matter at hand. That's to put out timeless music, and great albums.
Everyone deals with criticism in a different way. Some guys read it, some guys don't really listen to it, some guys try to stay away from it, some guys get angry about it.
I've got four or five records in my head at a time that I try to work on and I would like to do a guitar trio record next - since The Police I've mostly made records with keyboards.
People aren't buying records like they used to, so it's nice to try to figure out a way to make them do it. I would enjoy the same thing to own an old movie house, to try to trick people to come in - like having 3-D or Smell-o-Vision or Vibra-Vision or something. Mcguffins to get people interested.
As I view it, in every family a record should be kept...that record should be the first stone, if you choose, in the family altar. It should be a book known and used in the family circle; and when the child reaches maturity and goes out to make another household, one of the first things that the young couple should take along should be the records of their families, to be extended by them as life goes on...each one of us carries, individually, the responsibility of record keeping, and we should assume it.
You can't ask the guy with the checkbook to always be the person. So, we actors have to try. And believe me, it's not just young people who are struggling with this, trying to get things of substance made because of the proliferation of technology that it's just harder and harder to get things that really matter made. But they are being done and you just have to fight the good fight and try to... if you have something that you have written, you have to do your best to try to get it made in whatever way you can.
I was three or four, and my mother would have a Bing Crosby record playing through the house. It was my introduction to jazz, harmonies, melodies, musicianship, and emotion.
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