Quotes from Eric Carmen

I wanted girls to scream at me. I wanted to be a rock star.

As luck would have it, my voice is best when it's kind of blown out.

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.

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.

Around 1978, I got really, really sick of waking up in hotel rooms when I don't know where I am.

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.

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.'

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.

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

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.

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'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.

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.'

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?'

My song from 'Footloose,' 'Almost Paradise,' went number 1 dislodging Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' from that spot.

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.

The Raspberries had recorded some ballads on every one of our albums, but after 'Go All The Way' was successful Capital pretty much wanted to hear nothing but 'Go All The Way.'

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.'

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.

It was not hip for people to like us, because their little sister liked us.

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.

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.