I do a lot of Vegas work and work with the comedians.

One minute we can be in a small club, the next minute we can be in a coliseum, and the next minute we can be in a small auditorium. It varies, depending on the promoter, the budget, and the travelling distance.

The movie is actually from a book by Stephen King called The Body. When they were gonna put it to a motion picture, they found the story was a bit too strong for the title The Body, based on a young kid's movie. It would be too heavy.

The industry now wants to be in charge of everything.

It doesn't take me long to write songs.

Of course, the kids who had never heard of a person called Ben E. King were then aware of the name associated with the song. That gave a tremendous lift to me as an artist.

Those things don't happen today. I feel sorry for the kids in the industry today. They have on sunglasses, eat caviar in jet planes, but they'll never know the true feeling that we did.

When we took on the name The Drifters, we became the new Drifters, and signed a contract to be put on salary, which I think was like a hundred dollars a week, a piece, five hundred dollars for all five of us.

It would probably take me an hour to two to write it down, get the feel of it, and that's with quite a few changes. It's not really a hard thing for me to do.

I never even visualized for a second doing what I'm doing.

Yeah. I'm amateurish. I can play enough to write a song, or strum on a little guitar to write out a song. But, I don't play well at all. I wouldn't even attempt for a second to play in public.

And, because there was an honesty about all that was going on. It connected with the people in the street.

One of the members of the group, I can't remember which one, found out we were making $3 - $5,000 a night. We were getting a hundred dollars a week a piece. Everybody got upset about it.

The Phil Spector that I would meet has always been a nice, quiet, little guy who's very serious about his work; obviously you can tell that because each and everything he's ever done has always been charted.

Yeah. I've been pretty fortunate to travel I guess, all around the place.

At that time, we were in charge. We didn't ask. We just did. We just did what was in our heart.

I still think my whole career was accidental. I didn't pursue it. I feel like I'm cheating sometimes.

I do a lot of Vegas work and work with the comedians.

It never dawned on me at any particular time of my life that people are paid tremendous money to sing.

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.

We were doing things with a hundred per cent feeling. It wasn't programmed. It wasn't asked for. It wasn't structured. It was just there. It was very raw. I don't think the industry would allow that to happen again.

He was a manager, one of the singers, I guess talent coordinator for the local talent in Harlem. His name was Lover Patterson. He was living right across the street from where my dad had his restaurant. I guess he saw a lot of kids come in, a lot of my buddies.

You were able to sing something they related to instantly, because it was part of what you felt. It was part of what you had already traveled through. It's part of the people you were associating with daily. It was all of that.

If there's anything about the business that I love and that I'm extremely happy about, is that my career started at that time and that I met some of the greatest entertainers at that time and some are still here.

Many times I've gone on tours with Paul Anka. He would have someone sitting behind him to keep people from even talking to him. You were almost in a little restricted area there.

I do like what Alicia Keys and John Legend are doing. With their music, you keep your clothes on.

In my vocal, I think you can hear something of my earlier times when I'd sing in subway halls for the echo and perform doo-wop on street corners. But I had a lot of influences, too - singers like Sam Cooke, Brook Benton and Roy Hamilton.

I won't be afraid just as long as you stand, stand by me.

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

My favorite comedians were Jimmy Durante, George Burns, senior citizens.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

Half of the great comedians I've had in my shows and that I paid a lot of money to and who made my customers shriek were not only not funny to me, but I couldn't understand why they were funny to anybody.

I was up until all hours of the night, listening to stories, meeting great old comedians.

It seems like when I first started, people got into comedy because they wanted to be good comedians.

It seemed to me you could do anything in comics. So I started doing my thing, which is mainly influenced by novelists, stand-up comedians, that sort of thing.

I don't know any astronauts. There are a lot of people who say they want to be comedians.

Ever since I was a kid, I just loved those comedians on TV who would just have fun with the language.

I believe it is important for comedians to know who came before them.

The real good comedians, like Chaplin, would make you laugh and a second later, cry.

Whatever talent I had, I'm sure it helped that my parents were in the business and that I grew up around actors, comedians and directors.

Comedians walk out, get a feel for the crowd. If it's not going good, we change directions. If we got to drag your momma into this thing, we will. Whatever we got to do.

But it's fun to be something, have that, and you don't have to be real. It's like, comedians. They go on and they're doing all these jokes. I would be like that if I were more awake.

I thought comedians had to have black on their faces or red beards.

Comedians don't laugh. They're too busy analyzing why it's funny or not.

They don't make you pay for the humor. It's up and down, but they're trying to give you as many laughs as possible in 2 minutes. They are the most honest comedians ever.

That's why modern corporate movie making has become so laborious that comedians are kind of kicked out by 50.

I used to like writing for comedians - I enjoyed the challenge of making other people funny.

It was a decision to work clean. I just prefer to work that way. I have no problem with comedians who don't work that way. There was a temptation in the early '70s to reconsider. I decided against it.

I have worked with a great many comedians as opposed to comics, although I have worked with comics as well, I make the distinction.