67 Quotes by Eric Carmen

By the time 1997 had rolled around, I had been in the music business for all my life, from the age of 15. I started recording professionally when I was 18. I had seen how record companies work, how the business works, and truth be told, I was pretty disgusted by everything by that time.

As a writer, I've always been the sum total of my influences, and those are all over the spectrum: Rachmaninov, the Who, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Lesley Gore, Burt Bacharach and Leonard Bernstein, the Rolling Stones and the Small Faces.

I wanted to have a band that could rock as hard as the Who and sing like the Beatles and the Beach Boys; a band that could play concise, three-and-a-half minute songs with power and elegance.

I can make a record when I think I have a good one.

In Mexico they think I'm Mexican. In Italy they think I'm Italian.

Motley Crue recorded 'Tonight' and it's great fun to hear other people do my stuff. The only problem with it is it's so damn hard to play.

Democratic foursomes don't work in the '70s like they did in the '60s, when there were fewer musical directions.

When the second album came out, everybody gravitated immediately to the three and a half minute rock tunes and ignored the ballads. They thought all the Raspberries were was players of high-energy rock songs.

So when I went to Arista, I had a period of writing where I suddenly was unrestricted. I wasn't writing for a band for the first time. It opened up a whole other arena for me to work within.