Quotes

No matter how bad a show may be going some night, that song (Rock Around the Clock) will pull us through. It's my little piece of gold. (1970s)

When I'm 75 and you can still clap your hands, and I can still hold a guitar, we'll still have rock and roll. (1969)

I busked around the country riding freight trains, the usual story, playing in radio stations and what have you. I did a stint in Chicago at the International Barn Dance, and played in St. Louis and Dallas, Louisiana and out through the Midwest. Then I returned home. My mom and dad were living near Philadelphia and I returned there with disillusion at the grand old age of twenty two. I had had what I felt was a halfway decent career, but I felt I wasn't going to make it, and I returned with the idea of getting out of show business. Then I became a disc jockey on a local station, WPWA in Chester (Pennsylvania), because it was in me, but I was still singing country and western. (1979)

I was too shy to play in public. He (manager of the Booth Corners Auction Mart) asked me to sing for his big audience -- but I never figured I'd have the nerve. What I didn't know is that he had secretly rigged a microphone in his office and some loudspeakers in the mart. So I had my first audience before I knew about it. And they seemed to like it all right. So I went on doing it -- out in front of the public -- for a dollar a night. (1979)

Everybody hates us -- except the kids. (1956)