[The song, based on an old gospel song, was] the fusion of all the elements that till then had simply failed to coalesce, ... It was the uninhibited, altogether abandoned sound of the church; it was the keening, ecstatic voicings by which the world has come to know Ray Charles best. |
[Thus it was that Cooke began ascribing his writing credits to L.C., who would later turn over the money to Cooke.] It may have been unethical, ... But from Sam's point of view, it was adaptive compensation. He'd been taken advantage of because of his ignorance. He set up his label and publishing with the idea of not having him or his artists taken advantage of. |
Even as a child he had a vision of success taking place in a world that he couldn't possibly imagine, except through the movies, ... That's what lends the story either a tragic resonance or pathos or whatever. |
Everyone looked at him like he was their ... savior, ... everywhere he went he was an object of admiration and adoration -- and yet he couldn't muffle the growing discontent, the helplessness he felt at his inability to control not so much the world around him as his private world, the inner world that was revealed to no one but him. |
He believed he could do everything until the day he died. |
His father had taught him to never be taken advantage of or be disrespected, ... Songwriting and publishing were far more important for income than making records. It took Sam two minutes to recognize that the publishing deal he'd signed in 1957 was very disadvantageous to him. |
I didn't know Gate well, but I always appreciated him, most of all, his feisty, independent spirit and warm heart, ... Gate was the original contrarian, but there was always a well thought-out argument behind it. It wasn't just that Gate was unwilling to play the fool. He simply refused to live up to anyone else's definition or expectations of him. But I think this was part of his genius. From the start, Gate defined himself, both as a musician and as a man. |
I guess I thought of it as an American tragedy, ... It has all the elements -- the success is larger than life, the aspirations are larger than life, and the fall from grace is equally larger than life. |
I think Elvis was dismissed because of his popularity, |
I thought a lot of people would dismiss the subject as trivial, ... and ... that regardless of what I achieved, the subject would be dismissed. I think I've been gratified more than anything. Whether people like the book or don't like the book, they treat the subject as worthy of discussion. |
I wanted to write the book as far inside as possible, |
I was trying to tell as honest and true a story as I could, ... Really, the challenge is to portray the world the person lives in, and in the first volume it was an expanding world. You can see in 'Careless Love' how constricted Elvis' world becomes. |
It's highly suggestive in various ways. |
It's like he gained a lot from his popularity, but he suffers a lot for it too, |
That really bothered him -- where it came from -- and also, he was afraid he had gone beyond his audience. |