Quotes by Johnny Rivers

• What I really remember is that people camped out everywhere, and the fact everybody expected it might turn into a big nightmare with all sorts of hassles because back in those days everybody was smoking pot and taking acid.
• In 1965, Gibson made the red one I use now, and a black one, which was the first black 335 they ever made.
• In early '57, I bought a Fender Telecaster.
• Jack and I usually get together and sit around in the afternoons and start throwing ideas around.
• My first really good guitar was a Gibson J-45.
• One of the first groups we signed was the Fifth Dimension.
• One thing will lead to another and somebody will come up with a riff or a line or something we build from.
• The first amp I had back in the '50s was a small Fender.
• The web site and the Internet are a whole new ball game.
• When I came back to California in the early '60s I was hanging out with Jimmy Bowen, Phil Spector, and I wanted to be a record producer and work with other artists.
• I've got a Fender Concert amp from the '60s, the one Joe Osborn used. He played his bass through it.
• Even Woodstock turned out to be a disaster. Everybody was stuck in the mud and people got sick.
• The first time I went to New York, I met Alan Freed.
• I'd gone through periods where I didn't work live performances for probably seven or eight months at a time.
• I was working at this club in downtown L.A. from four to eight at night, just Eddie Rubin, the drummer, and I.
• I think my favorite album was probably Realization.
• I think after 1970 or so, after I sold Soul City, I took off for awhile and didn't do too many gigs.
• I loved playing and I was actually working two jobs.
• I learned some chords and I started watching anybody I could, once I really got into it.
• I got to see all these incredible blues players, like Jimmy Reed.
• Guys like Otis Blackwell and Bobby Darin, and all the guys who were writing songs for Elvis at the time, just hanging around, writing songs, talking about music.
• But I always loved songs with great lyrics.
• Alan's publishing company was in the Brill Building, and of course, the Brill Building was where all the songwriters hung out because that's where all the publishers were.
• After that initial success, every chance we got we'd hire that remote recording truck and just record stuff at the Whisky because it was so inexpensive.
• About two months into the Whisky, I borrowed some money and rented a remote recording truck.
• I accepted an offer to do a concert for the reopening of the Mall of Memphis.