Eric Carmen
I noticed that on the Beach Boys' 'Pet Sounds' record they could get away with racy lyrics like that because of how they looked and the melodic way they sang the suggestive stuff. They slid it by the censors.Collection: Pet
In Mexico they think I'm Mexican. In Italy they think I'm Italian.
When I got the call to do a song for the sound track for this little movie that I was told was called 'Dancing Dirty,' I wasnt that wild about the idea. Probably no one would ever see it. What good would it do? But I said: 'What the heck... I've got nothing better to do.'
It was easy for people to be derisive about our music because they saw what we were doing as retro. But we were like barbarians trying to crash the gates of the bloated progressive rock that we despised.
It wasn't until after Raspberries, Big Star and Badfinger came to exist that powerpop became a genre. In each case, I suspect Pete Ham, Alex Chilton and I all felt the same void after the Beatles broke up, and somehow we were all trying to fill it.
Writing is about bringing something from inside you that you're trying to say, and not just trying to say something to please someone else.
Well, when the Raspberries ended in early 1975 suddenly I didn't have to write to anybody's strengths or weaknesses. I was completely wide open and I thought wow, I can write anything I want now. I can use session musicians. I can find another band that sings like the Beach Boys, I can do all kinds of things.
As luck would have it, my voice is best when it's kind of blown out.
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 remember our first interviews at the Capitol tower. These magazine people were asking us things like 'What's your favorite color?' and 'What do you like to do on a date?' I'd ask, 'Where are you from?' and they'd say, 'Fave' or 'Rave' or whatever. We wondered, 'When do the real writers get here?'
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.
When I was 12 years old and first decided I wanted to be a songwriter, the people that I always looked up to were Rodgers and Hammerstein, Leonard Bernstein, and people like that.
Democratic foursomes don't work in the '70s like they did in the '60s, when there were fewer musical directions.
We didn't want to be tied to that damn teenybopper market. We tried to convince our record company that we could do more than silly AM hits, but they wouldn't listen.
Our audiences were always the most bizarre mix. You'd have a thousand screaming girls in the front of the stage and then ten very serious rock critics in the back of the room going, 'Uh-huh, I think we understand this.'
It was not hip for people to like us, because their little sister liked us.
In the beginning, we were a real good, straight rock 'n' roll band. We were writing quality tunes.
There was nothing wrong with having teen-age fans, but we were hoping to appeal to a much broader audience than the 13-to 17-year-olds.
When I was in the studio doing 'Hungry Eyes,' we had to make it an '80s record, but we wanted it to feel like the '60s.
I wanted girls to scream at me. I wanted to be a rock star.
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.
It gets very lonely out on the road some times.
The Raspberries were together two years for one century. It was a very successful failure of a group.
Our aim was to be playable on both AM and FM radio - something no one had done in a while.
I've never been one of those 'quantity' guys. I'm not one of those guys who puts out a record every year whether it's any good or not.
I've had the great luxury in my career to be so successful as a songwriter that I didn't have the desperate need to have material to tour behind. It took a lot of pressure off me.
I can make a record when I think I have a good one.
Around 1978, I got really, really sick of waking up in hotel rooms when I don't know where I am.
I've always thought, since the beginning of my career, that it was better to take your time and write some good stuff and then go in and not be pushed or forced into just crankin' stuff out, whether it was great or not.
I've had a great luxury in my career in that I became a very successful songwriter, which made it unnecessary for me to have to just consistently crank out albums and run off on tour for the sake of supporting myself.
There are things that you write when you're 20 and there are things that you write when you're 40 and then there are things that you write when you're old.
I love this business. Here today, gone, gone tomorrow. I was real gone for a while.
Soundtracks are made all the time that die horrible deaths - even soundtracks for popular movies.
I was known as a ballad singer who sang melodramatic heavily produced ballads. I'm not known as a mid-tempo singer who does fun songs. I'm not going to do a song like 'Dancing on the Ceiling.'
The Raspberries was formed as kind of a reaction to prog rock, which we didn't like. 'Let's bring some songwriting and harmonies back to music' And we did that.
If you actually go back and listen to my first album, there are some things on there that are kind of rock 'n' roll.
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.
I always wrote ballads, and I always wrote rockers.
Half the people tell me, 'I love 'Go All the Way,' but why do you have to write all those schlocky ballads.' And half say, 'I love 'All By Myself,' but why do you waste your time with this rock 'n' roll stuff?' I'd like to think that I could do both.
I hated prog rock; to me, it was the ultimate expression of a bloated sense of self-importance and mindless self-indulgence.
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.
Over thirty-plus years, a certain myth has grown up around the band. And the last thing I ever wanted to do was put us on a stage somewhere, in less than the best circumstances, and pop the bubble, have the fans come in and say, 'Gee, they weren't that good.' It's your responsibility to give them something to be excited about.
If you want to know more about who I am, just listen to my music.
I've never done any vocal warm ups, ever. As a matter of fact, I learned to sing playing three sets a night in smoky clubs.
It's the duty of every generation to find music their parents hate.
My song from 'Footloose,' 'Almost Paradise,' went number 1 dislodging Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' from that spot.
Making records is hard work.
As a writer, I'm always looking for what I call the universal, something everyone has felt and they can identify with. That's the reason for the success of 'All By Myself.' Who in the world hasn't felt that way in some point?
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.
In Nashville, good guitar players are a dime a dozen.