Quotes About Ambition

When you're making a record - and I've never said this to anybody, but it's true - when you're making a record, and you go, 'Man, this might win a Grammy!' you feel that level of confidence when you're making a record.

When I got involved with The Five Crowns who later became The Drifters, and we got this hit record, I still was looking at this as kind of a fun thing.

I record it here today to establish my early predisposition to editorial work - to be both pontifical and wrong.

My first record came out while I was a senior in high school, which is dangerous.

From the age of 14 to about 20, I bombarded record companies and DJs with my demos. I was desperate to get it out there. Most of the time, I got nothing back.

I always thought that if record companies didn't understand me, fine - I'd go and do it by myself.

I wanted to produce Nancy LaMott's albums, so I created my own record company.

When I came into the music, I was forced to be a CEO. I was forced to be an entrepreneur; I was forced to... because I was looking for a deal. I didn't have this grand scheme of starting a record company and then morphing into a clothing empire.

My number one goal is to take over the music business and run a really great record company.

I told the record company I didn't feel the need to be at red-carpet events. I wanted a career. But I wanted to keep myself intact as a person.

I'm pushing ahead on my own - you no longer need a large record company to make you a star.

For a long time, I felt like I failed myself, my career, and my record company.

The record company has fought for themselves, never for me.

I dropped out of law school when I got my record deal.

I've always known, before I had a record deal, that the thing is to go out and put on the show. I've been doing that from day one.

I tried out for American Idol, I got a record deal, and now it's like my best days are ahead of me.

When we started playing our music, there weren't really many bigger punk bands. We wrote for ourselves. We weren't expecting to get a record deal or get on the radio.

When I was 19 I had a record deal.

I had pretty much raised my kids and my first wife and I were divorced, so I began, in earnest, to start my musical career again. Going for the big record deal and all of that.

Well, I had a record deal since I was 18, and it got me where I am.

You expect certain things. You build up in your mind how it's supposed to go down. When you get a record deal, you think you're supposed to get X, Y, and Z. It doesn't happen like that. You're like 'Oh, this isn't as exciting as I thought it was going to be.'

Before I had a record deal, I was living in New York and playing anywhere I could, from somebody's house to an open mic to coffeeshops.

I made a CD in my dorm room and put it on the Internet, and my friends blew it up. Within a few months, I was doing shows across the country without a record deal, without a single, without anything.

Education was a given, only because of the way I was raised. Truth be told, I thought, at 15 years old, I should go and get a record deal and drop out of school, and my parents would have had none of that. I'm grateful now that my parents were pushing me in that way, because I wasn't mature enough on so many levels to do that.