Top 22 Bill Medley Quotes

Little Richard was it for me, man. Later, it was Ray Charles and Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, B.B. King.

I don’t know what I would do if it wasn’t music, ’cause I’m really a one trick pony.

Every time I go on stage, it’s like a first date. I put on my best clothes, shave, and get as handsome as I can. Then I say the cutest things I know to say, and I become the very best Bill Medley I can be because I want to win my date over. My audience is the date that I want to impress every time.

It was so odd to have young kids singing ‘Lovin’ Feelin’ because they knew it from ‘Top Gun.’

I’m kind of a nervous guy. I know on television I look like I’m half asleep, but inside I’m going about 100 miles an hour.

The emotion of a song’s lyrics has always been what grabs me deeply.

I know there are a lot of tough stories out there about Sinatra, but he was so sweet to Bobby and me. He even had us replace him one night in the main room. He didn’t get Sammy or Dean; he said, ‘I want the kids to do it.’ Man, what an honor.

The reason I still love performing is that people my age, a little younger and a little older, show up to relive that thing that made them so happy all those years ago. And as long as they show up, I’ll keep on keepin’ on till I keel over.

I’m a Santa Ana boy from 1940 to all my life. And Santa Ana was different only in the fact that Orange County was just small. Hell, I used to ride my motorcycle through the orange groves, and now it’s tracts of homes.

The Old Vegas is gone. It’s not that it’s necessarily better or worse; it’s just totally different.

When you have the biggest record in the country, everybody wants you; everybody needs you, and they need you now.

It sounds odd, but I was a singer and started writing songs, and I didn’t have anything in mind. Maybe it crossed my mind that it would be cool to have a hit record and a career, but that was so out of reach that I don’t think I thought about it that much.

George Klein says that Elvis had five real friends outside of his circle, and I was blessed to be one of them. I spent a lot of time with Elvis in Vegas and at Graceland.

It’s the audiences that inspire me to keep going. I feel that we all grew up together. The majority now are the people who were raised on the music in the Sixties.

The Righteous Brothers were purely rhythm and blues, black music.

When ‘You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling‘ hit, we were doing a show called ‘Shindig!’ and the Righteous Brothers suddenly became big business.

There were moments that Bobby and I would come offstage after performing in front of 20,000 people and say, ‘Wow, how did that happen?’ It’s been a blessed life.

I just can’t stand being in airports anymore. I just can’t stand it.

That was the toughest thing I ever had to do: tell my son that his mum was gone. I was a bachelor living on the beach, but I had to pull it together very quick for my boy.

The friendship I had with Elvis began to take shape in 1968 when I was recording in Memphis. I’d record during the day, and Elvis would send one of his guys over to bring me to Graceland at night. Everything you’ve heard about Graceland during Elvis’s glory days is true and then some.

All my memories of being in Las Vegas with Bobby were great. Frank Sinatra brought us to the Sands Hotel in 1965. When we worked that lounge, it was a great lounge. I think it was bigger than the showroom. We were two 25-year-old dumb kids from Orange County in Las Vegas with The Rat Pack.

There’s this Bruno Mars guy. I met him in Hawaii when was doing Elvis imitations at the age of about five or six years old. There’s a lot of old school in him. He’s got a depth that I just love.