Bill Medley Quotes
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Opening for The Beatles in San Francisco at the Cow Palace was great. It was terrific fun to do. The tour itself, I must say, wasn't a whole lot of fun, artistically. It was just more kind of interesting.
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I had fans, and the industry and everybody saying, 'Keep the Righteous Brothers going; keep the music alive,' and I really didn't want to do that. I had sung with a couple of guys who would supposedly be really good Bobby Hatfields, and I thought, 'Oh geez, it's really anti-climatic.'
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All my memories of being in Las Vegas with Bobby were great. Frank Sinatra brought us to the Sands Hotel in 1965. When we worked that lounge, it was a great lounge. I think it was bigger than the showroom. We were two 25-year-old dumb kids from Orange County in Las Vegas with The Rat Pack.
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George Klein says that Elvis had five real friends outside of his circle, and I was blessed to be one of them. I spent a lot of time with Elvis in Vegas and at Graceland.
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Elvis was a great guy. We'd just horse around together or go to see a movie. He drove me around Graceland in a golf cart. He was a fan of our music and was curious about how I sounded so black.
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The Righteous Brothers started out in Orange County, California. It was about the whitest place in the country, but the black marines from the nearby base heard there were two guys singing rhythm and blues, so they came down to hear us. At the end of our songs they'd yell out, 'That's righteous, brother!' and that's how we got our name.
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I know there are a lot of tough stories out there about Sinatra, but he was so sweet to Bobby and me. He even had us replace him one night in the main room. He didn't get Sammy or Dean; he said, 'I want the kids to do it.' Man, what an honor.
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There's this Bruno Mars guy. I met him in Hawaii when was doing Elvis imitations at the age of about five or six years old. There's a lot of old school in him. He's got a depth that I just love.
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The emotion of a song's lyrics has always been what grabs me deeply.
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Every time I go on stage, it's like a first date. I put on my best clothes, shave, and get as handsome as I can. Then I say the cutest things I know to say, and I become the very best Bill Medley I can be because I want to win my date over. My audience is the date that I want to impress every time.
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When you have the biggest record in the country, everybody wants you; everybody needs you, and they need you now.
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The friendship I had with Elvis began to take shape in 1968 when I was recording in Memphis. I'd record during the day, and Elvis would send one of his guys over to bring me to Graceland at night. Everything you've heard about Graceland during Elvis's glory days is true and then some.
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It was so odd to have young kids singing 'Lovin' Feelin' because they knew it from 'Top Gun.'
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I think 'Lovin' Feelin' was probably one of the most - probably in '64 and '65, one of the more dramatic love songs for these kids to grab hold of. I mean, they had been listening to, you know, kind of cute songs, and 'Lovin' Feelin' was just a strong, powerful song.
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It sounds odd, but I was a singer and started writing songs, and I didn't have anything in mind. Maybe it crossed my mind that it would be cool to have a hit record and a career, but that was so out of reach that I don't think I thought about it that much.
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There were moments that Bobby and I would come offstage after performing in front of 20,000 people and say, 'Wow, how did that happen?' It's been a blessed life.
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The Righteous Brothers got so heavy because of the dramatic hit records like 'Lovin' Feelin.' Bobby and I just felt like we were a couple of Orange County guys who were just having a great time singing rock n' roll, and then, boy, it became something else.
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When 'You've Lost that Lovin' Feeling' hit, we were doing a show called 'Shindig!' and the Righteous Brothers suddenly became big business.
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Little Richard was it for me, man. Later, it was Ray Charles and Bobby 'Blue' Bland, B.B. King.
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The Old Vegas is gone. It's not that it's necessarily better or worse; it's just totally different.
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Throughout our career, people thought Bobby and I disliked each other. That's not true, but our relationship was very complicated. We were like brothers - and brothers don't always see eye to eye.
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The reason I still love performing is that people my age, a little younger and a little older, show up to relive that thing that made them so happy all those years ago. And as long as they show up, I'll keep on keepin' on till I keel over.
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Man, we were so opposite. One guy sang high, the other low. One guy tall, one short. We were like a quartet without the two guys in the middle. If you were putting two guys together to make hit records, you wouldn't have picked Bobby and me.
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Every so often, if I'm in a melancholy mood, I'll sing 'Desperado' in my shows. I'll sit alone at the piano and play it as a solo. The song feels like an old friend - except now it's saying, 'You were a desperado once, but you worked your way out of it.'