Waylon Jennings Quotes

By the time my first solo record came out, I was making a handsome living as a record producer. I had worked with the Band, Janis Joplin and all of these other artists in the Albert Grossman organization. So as my so-called solo career evolved, I never felt pressure that I had to come back and top when I might've done before.

I was kicked off a record label and didn't get picked up again. It was devastating at first because I thought, 'Oh my God. My career is over. What's gonna happen? What am I going to do?' Once I got that I could have a career, a very good career, without having a hit record, then I changed.

It only took me six months to get a record deal, but it took me 20 years to have a hit.

I feel very lucky to get to fly the flag of RCA Records and Sony Music.

I wish I could say I had this master plan for a career, but I always thought acting was something I'd just do until I had a hit record.

It's pretty amazing to me that my first hit record was an Elvis Presley record.

So there was a way for you to get promoted and survive as an artist without worrying about AM radio hits.

I don't believe in the philosophy of stumbling across hit records.

I've only had one platinum album, and it's 'Red River Blue'.

First of all, I've been having a wonderful run of luck with cover albums, songs I didn't write. I had five pop cover albums and two Christmas albums, and they were all very successful.

Apollo Records signed me for my gospel ability.

I'd be saying, 'No, I'm so not a DJ, I'm a producer.' But no matter how much faith you may have in yourself, until you have a hit you can't really run around telling everyone you're a producer.

I haven't had a big hit record in America since 1987.

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.

My ambition was to be a record producer, and I had started doing that in the late '60s with my work with the MC5 and my friend Livingston Taylor.

Yes; my brother Bobby used to distribute records at King Records. I had a job there, too, packing records up and shipping them off. But I always wanted to play sessions at Stax, so I figured out a way to do it.

When you are in your 20's and 30's, you just want a hit record and you don't really care how it happens.

I would be a huge hypocrite if I didn't tell you that at one time in my life I thought the way that you made music was you got on a major label and you got famous.

I made my first album, and I guess it wasn't a fluke, because now I'm on my 16th.

I did my thing with Jive. I was a national recording artist, but I had run into a wall.

I produced the Buckcherry album and I just finished a band called American Pearl on Wind-Up Records. That's Creed's label. They're pretty rocking. Now I'm looking for another band to produce.

After two years in the songwriting world, I wrote 'All About That Bass.' L.A. Reid heard it and signed me as an artist.

We had this budding baby band going and we hadn't reached that development we wanted to reach before we got signed to a major label.

Look at my track record: All of the big hits we created in Holland worked globally.

Columbia was a wonderful label for me. Wonderful. The records I made there garnered me an audience. I won a number of polls during the years that I was at Columbia. The Downbeat Jazz Poll. Leonard Feather, who was a huge critic back in the day, different polls that he had. The Playboy poll, a number of polls. So the music was great.