Peter Guralnick Quotes (12 Quotes)


    This is something I wanted to do for over 20 years, ... From the time I first met J.W. Alexander, he drew an inspiring portrait of an individual you wouldn't know from the music alone.

    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.

    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.

    The real story is that the fans are tied to Elvis by the same loyalty that he showed to them, ... He did show an extraordinary sense of identification with the fans. He had an almost mystical belief that all of his strength -- and his very legitimacy -- came from his fans.

    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.


    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.

    They looked up to him. Even Barbara -- she's still trying to understand Sam. And J.W. -- Sam was the person he'd liked to have been.

    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 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.

    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.

    That really bothered him -- where it came from -- and also, he was afraid he had gone beyond his audience.



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