Quotes from Eric Carmen

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.

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?

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.

If you actually go back and listen to my first album, there are some things on there that are kind of rock 'n' roll.

Most bands play one style of song. If you listen to Metallica it all sounds exactly like Metallica, and if you listen to Black Sabbath it all sounds like Black Sabbath. I like AC/DC a lot but you can pick those sounds out on the radio in a heartbeat because they all have certain things in common.

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

I hated prog rock; to me, it was the ultimate expression of a bloated sense of self-importance and mindless self-indulgence.

In the beginning, we were a real good, straight rock 'n' roll band. We were writing quality tunes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Soundtracks are made all the time that die horrible deaths - even soundtracks for popular movies.

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.

In Nashville, good guitar players are a dime a dozen.

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.

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.

Our aim was to be playable on both AM and FM radio - something no one had done in a while.

It gets very lonely out on the road some times.