David Geffen

I don’t think people get to be successful unless they have very strong egos.

It’s an idiotic thing that you have to be a college graduate to be an agent.

My dream was to make $1,000 a week, have a Cadillac convertible and an apartment on Ocean Park where I would’ve thought that would be nirvana.

[‘Why don’t you manage me’ – Laura Nyro] Eventually I thought do I really believe that she could be one of the biggest stars in the world? Should I give up my career at this point in my life, where I’m doing so well, and put all my marbles in Laura’s [Nyro] basket? And I woke up one morning and I thought if you really believe it – go for it.

I don’t think people get to be successful without ambition.

You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about! You’re crazy!

I’m not really on a mission to tell anybody anything. I’d rather be figured out.

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do and then just go for it. I never know what the public’s going to like, anyway.

If you take the time and your talent is real, it will last.

The people who know nothing about music are the ones always talking about it.

I have always seen Jazz as innovative.

Life is too full of distractions nowadays. When I was a kid we had a little Emerson radio and that was it. We were more dedicated. We didn’t have a choice.

Jazz is such a powerful cultural statement that it’s almost as if it’s intertwined with society.

You never master the instrument. You always just strive to get better.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

Just give a drum roll, announce my name and I come out and sing. I have a contract that says I’m a singer. So I sing.

I was walking down the street, and I saw a sewer digger on his lunch hour open his lunch pail, dig out a harmonica, knock out the cracker crumbs, and play a bunch of tunes on it. I was fascinated by that harmonica, so I stared the guy out of it. I just stared at him. He said, ‘Here, kid, take it. Get out of here.’

Sometimes I just think that there are more things to be said to make the audience understand what I’m trying to do more. When I’m singing, I don’t want you to just hear the melody. I want you to relive the story, because most of the songs have pretty good storytelling.

I’m going to be on the road for the rest of my life.

I used to play a place in Twist, Arkansas… It used to get quite cold in Twist. And they used to take something that looked like a big garbage pail and set it in the middle of the floor, half-fill it with kerosene. They’d light that fuel and that’s what we’d use for heat… But this particular night, two guys started to fighting and one of them knocked the other one over onto this container. When they did it spilled on the floor. Now, it was already burning so when it spilled it looked like a river of fire. Everybody ran for the front door including yours truly. But when I got on the outside then I realized that I’d left the guitar inside. I went back for it. The building was a wooden building and it was burning so fast that when I got my guitar it started to collapse around me. So I almost lost my life trying to save the guitar. But the next morning we found that these two guys who were fighting were fighting about a lady. I never did meet the lady but I learned that her name was Lucille. So I named my guitar Lucille to remind me not to do a thing like that again.

It is better to be felt than to be heard.