A Quote by Samuel Ervin Beam

My folks had a lot of Motown records, so that was a kind of an early inspiration. I grew up on the radio really. — © Samuel Ervin Beam
My folks had a lot of Motown records, so that was a kind of an early inspiration. I grew up on the radio really.
I grew up in a very music-loving home with a lot of records, a lot of TV, a lot of radio, a lot of video - VHS cinema, basically.
I grew up on listening to, like, Mantronix and BDP and EPMD and Kool G Rap and Ultramag and Public Enemy and Fat Boys and Run DMC and a lot of those early records, those Rubin-era records. Those were always snare- and stab-heavy records.
I grew up listening to a lot of that stuff, Motown and Stooges. But also early rock-and-roll like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley. I feel like as I grew older, I've been working with different musicians, people that have are constantly showing me different things.
I grew up not far from where Motown was founded, maybe 300 miles from Detroit and I've always liked - I used to like the way they made records. I still do, I just haven't had a chance to hear as much. They used to entertain me.
Listen- my relationship with radio on a personal level is nothing but a one way love-a-thon... I love radio, I grew up on radio. That's where I heard Buddy Holly, that's where I heard Chuck Berry. I couldn't believe it the first time I heard one of my records on the radio, and I STILL love hearing anything I'm involved with on radio, and some of my best friends were from radio. But we were on different sides of that argument, there's no question about that.
One of my strongest memories is my father playing bongos in the living room in Detroit listening to Motown radio. He was this skinny white bald guy, but he was really moved by blues and Motown and funk.
I grew up listening to a lot of early '90s hip-hop. I had the debut Wu-Tang album, Biggie, Snoop, that kind of stuff. Hieroglyphics, the Gravediggaz. I remember D.O.C.'s 'The Portrait of a Masterpiece' was something that had a big influence on me.
Even though I grew up playing folk music - and surf music, originally - I was listening to Motown and Stax on the radio as well. That music always resonated with me.
I grew up bilingual, I grew up speaking Chinese in the home, Mandarin Chinese with my parents, and I learned English because I was born and raised in the U.S. That really gave me an edge. I understand that, from the experts, if you grew up bilingual, your brain kind of gets wired to accept a new language. It was a very serious deal because not only did I have to learn Russian to a high degree in order to function as a necessary member of the crew, but also I knew that the Russians that came over that made an effort and had some success in learning English, those were the folks we trusted.
The fans are the end result of what we do. Sometimes I think we forget that those are the folks that mean it in this game. There's plenty of evidence to be found that you can have all the #1 records in the world, but if you really ain't touchin' them, you don't come home with gold records and platinum records. I'm very proud that we've only had one #1 record, but we've sold two and one half million!
'Boneless,' even though we were thinking about servicing it to radio, it made more sense putting a vocal on there. This was actually the first time that I really looked at doing a song for radio and kind of let go of some control and listened to a lot of different radio pluggers and had Ultra come in and help out with ideas.
My introduction to Motown was through The Jackson Five and Michael Jackson. Michael's been my greatest creative inspiration, so that's how I really became familiar with Motown as a whole, and as I got older, I learned far more about the other groups.
I became a radio nut. I loved the afternoon serials, and I got into jazz through the radio. I had a subscription to Down Beat when I was 12. And I'd spend a lot of time in front of the minor, miming records.
I grew up listening to a lot of classic jazz, and stuff like The Beatles, and old Motown stuff, and a lot of classical music. I just loved all of that.
I listened to a lot of Marvin Gaye and Motown records.
Where I grew up, acting wasn't really accessible. I was just playing sports. But, I did watch a lot of TV. I watched a lot of Clint Eastwood movies on TV and had this fantasy of being like him when I grew up.
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