Manika Quotes

When I was 13, I was saying that I wanted to be signed to a label. I was begging my dad to get me signed with somebody.

Albert Grossman called my office and spoke with my partner Richard Leacock and asked if we'd be interested in making a film with his client, Bob Dylan.

I was signed to A&M, I was signed to Lou Adler, who had a company within a company, which was A&M Records, and everything - James Taylor, Rita Coolidge, Carole King - I worked on all of that stuff.

Artist development is something that I've been passionate about from my days at Uptown and Motown Records.

If you have good songs and a real desire to make music, the next thing to do, instead of approach record companies, is to get yourself a really good manager because then it allows you to focus on your profession of being a musician. Then they can focus on the darker art of the record label and the music industry.

I would love to continue working behind the scenes in music - to produce and manage up-and-coming musical talent would be a dream!

I know it is common nowadays for artists to start labels but this is a thoroughly constructed vehicle for inspired talent. This is a market that we've been living, breathing and eating for our entire lives - one where a huge void currently exists. Favored Nations is a long-term commitment.

I'm still involved in the business of Cheap Trick, so I keep my eye on that kind of stuff.

I've never had a relationship with a record executive. I always went to the record company by someone that liked my playing. Then they would get fired, and I'd be left with the record company. And then - because they got fired - the record company wouldn't do anything for me.

I was 16 when I linked up with my manager - first person I ever auditioned for - and I've been in this ever since.

As an artist development platform, we've proven that all the work done behind the scenes at American Idol, along with surviving the rigors of the intense live shows, can properly prepare a winner for a real-world music career opportunity.

I want to have a publishing company and a record label, and I want to manage five artists... eventually.

I'm not interested in anything besides making some good music, helping some artists, being an executive. I'm pretty happy with that.

If we'd had a Svengali manager and done what we would have been told, maybe we would have had a bigger, more hugely successful career.

It was a very lucky set of incidents that led to Wham! getting a record contract - although we weren't Wham! when we got the record contract. We were nothing; we were just two friends who had written a few songs.

I'm a free agent so I'm probably gonna be signing a major deal that I'm gonna be announcing pretty soon, and a few good singles are coming out.

You know, I didn't have enough money to quit my day job... the myth of the major label deal. Nowadays, you have a tour bus and a stylist and all this stuff. But back then, no way.

When I was young, I was offered my first recording contract in 1971 and was offered quite a bit of money if I would change my character and be a '70s version of Cher.

I started my music career at 18 and for a long while I let other people handle my affairs.

I'm really happy with Elektra, I don't have anything bad to say about them at all. I always knew a major label was the right place for me to be. I never really had an opportunity to go to an independent label anyway.

Mostly I've never let record companies become involved with my music, which was a very smart thing that my first manager Dave Robinson did, to keep them out of it.

To come out in the music business, you only really get one shot. A lot of people get to play small gigs first, and build up that way, without anyone really seeing them.

That whole lifestyle - make a record, do a tour: I know how to do that. It doesn't interest me.

When I finished Westlife, we had - Louie Walsh is still managing me - I was lucky to have options from different labels such as Sony and Universal. When we met Capitol and Nick Raphael, I just believed in them the most, and it looked like they believed in me the most.

What people are feeling is the similarity in what I do and how I'm capable of breaking a new artist into a competitive field. People can't wrap their head around the fact that Gaga did not do that on her own. She didn't. There was a Laurieann Gibson.