I started with Bobby Darin. He signed me to Capitol when I was 15. I was 14, getting ready to be 15. Then the next encounter I had was with I think Peggy Lee. I sang background with The Blossoms with Darlene Love.
I had – after I sang the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ so badly, after my tragic singing accident, after that, you know, all my stuff kind of, like, really got even more full blown and, you know, I got stage fright and, you know, I couldn’t do stand-up anymore and let alone sing and all the other things.
Professionally, when I did the Olympic games and sang for my country in Australia. It was a big moment, Sydney in 2000. It was just a brilliant moment in my life.
You know when I really realized like ‘wow’ what a gift this is was when I sang at camp and a girl wrote me a letter and said the song that I sung kept her from committing suicide.
In the beginning of my career, I didn’t have any female singer in metal to ask for advice, nor have I ever had a role model or a metal singer that could inspire me, because the way I sang was operatic.
My father was a singer. So it just kind of happened that one Sunday while my dad was singing, I just walked out and stood next to him, and I started singing the song that he was leading, and I sang it in perfect pitch.
I enjoyed playing everywhere, especially my mother’s garden and my neighbor’s. I loved my kindergarten. We sang songs; we played everywhere and ate lunch. I had a childhood that I would wish for anyone.
When I was 13, I went on ‘Britain’s Got Talent.’ I auditioned. I sang a cover of a song called ‘White Blank Page’ by Mumford & Sons.
I knew I had a remarkable voice, but I was embarrassed because it was so high. But when I sang at my bar mitzvah, the rabbi was in tears. He said to my parents, ‘He must become a cantor in the synagogue,’ but my mother said, ‘No, he’s going to be a concert pianist.’
My wife is a very talented singer. She sang a lot on ‘Roswell,’ and I am embarrassed to sing around her.
I got my first blockbuster break for the movie ‘Cocktail,’ where I sang ‘Second Hand Jawani.’
I played piano back in my elementary school days and I sang a cappella back in college.
When we were younger, we sang at the dinner table. We started doing two part harmony, then three part, and then we added back up tapes and instruments.
I grew up the son of a Seventh Day Adventist minister, so I was really close to the church and sang church music between sips at my bottle, you know? I sat on the piano bench next to my mother. She was the church organist, so that music is deeply inside of me.
The first ‘Charlemagne’ album is metal, of course, but what I sang was more symphonic.
I sang when I was in primary school, and I did singing at Sylvia Young: no acting at all.
People don’t listen to one radio station. On iTunes you can mix different worlds and bring country and pop and folk and live music together with a mass audience. I could have sung ‘Easy’ in a country way but I just sang it how I sing. I think it’s a really nice blend.
I sang throughout school, and it was always my passion. For whatever reason, acting took the front seat, but all of the projects that I’ve been doing seem to have some sort of musical element to them.
There were a lot of really special moments for me. When I first sang ‘Fix You’ by Coldplay, that was one. I love that song so much, and I love Coldplay, and I love what the song meant.
I wrote my first song, ‘Conversion’, to this little hip-hop instrumental. I went to an open-mic, plugged my iPod into the P.A., and sang over the beat.
People don’t connect the girl that sang ‘Mickey’ with the girl who was one of the seven original Lockers or the same girl who was in ‘Easy Rider’ or the same girl who choreographed David Bowie, Tina Turner, and Bette Midler tours. It’s like I’ve led five lives.
Kind words are the music of the world. They have a power which seems to be beyond natural causes, as if they were some angel’s song, which had lost its way and come on Earth, and sang on undyingly, smiting the hearts of men with sweetest wounds, and putting for the while an angel’s nature into us.
The most scared I’d ever been was the first time I sang at a rugby match, Australia versus New Zealand, in front of one hundred thousand people. I had a panic attack the night before because people have been booed off and never worked again… just singing one song, the national anthem.
I was a loud child, and if my mother sang to me, I would be quiet.
I’ve always sang a little like a 16-year-old girl, but even Ann-Margret stopped after a while and brought it down a bit.
I can still remember the afternoon, on my 15th birthday, when I opened up ‘The Virgin and the Gypsy,’ D.H. Lawrence’s novella, in my tiny cell in boarding school, and whole worlds of possibility opened out that I had never guessed existed. The language was on fire and sang of liberation.
My parents always supported me, but I was put to task. My father thought when I sang, I was sharp; my mother was upset when I wasn’t in the first line at recitals.
I sang opera for over four years when I was younger.
Cowboys had guitars. And they sang country ’cause they lived in the country.
I did an album called ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.’ I sang the song on ‘Hee Haw.’
When you’re all singing together, it brings things together. I know the songs that my grandfather and my father sang.
Ringo Starr may not have much of a voice, but when he sang a song on a Beatle album, it had its own special charm.
I always sang, I always acted, I always played.
For a while, I thought I would maybe be a writer. But with music, I was such a nerd; I was really obsessive about it. The problem was I couldn’t really sing. I think one day I sang from a different part of my body, from my gut for the first time, and I was like, ‘Oh! That’s how you’re supposed to do it.’
I sang at least one hit for almost every star – Dharmendra, Jeetendra and Vinod Khanna included, and several hits for all the Khans, Akshay Kumar, Rishi Kapoor and many more.
My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.
Everyone in my family sang, and we would always sing these songs.
I grew up with singers. My father’s mother sang opera. My dad was a big band singer. I can’t remember a time there wasn’t music in the house, so I grew up listening to great songwriters – George Gershwin, Cole Porter – and my grandma was playing opera for me before I was 3.
I sang in the coffee houses of the country in the early ’60s with no idea of success in terms of records or television. I just thought I was a storyteller. I didn’t even think of myself as a singer.
It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most.
I would say, maybe from five years on, I sang on stages constantly. That’s what I call my natural habitat: It’s a place where I feel most like myself and the most confident, the most excited.
When we were first started we were doing a lot of Motown stuff, but actually playing it more in a rock way. Everybody in the band sang and we did a lot of harmonies.
My brother Art was a doo-wopper. He had a group that sat out on a park bench in New Orleans and sang harmonies at night, and they’d go around and win all the talent shows and get all the girls, you know.
Everyone in the group sang when I joined them. That was one of the problems with L.T.D.: there was no focal point. It took until 1976, or about six or seven years, before I was put into the spotlight as a vocalist. That’s when I recorded ‘Love Ballad,’ and it became a hit for the group.
I felt alive when I read a script and acted out a scene, or sang a song. It was my dream. I’m just very lucky that I’m still doing it and able to earn a living from it.
I auditioned for a solo in church and got it. I was about seven and I sang a song called, ‘Jesus, I Heard You Had a Big House’ and I remember people standing up at the end and me thinking, ‘Oh, I think I’m going to like this.’ That’s how it all began. Sounds funny to say you got your start in church, but I did.
My parents – Augustine Joseph and Elizabeth – discovered my talent for singing when I was a kid. I remember them telling me that I sang a classical piece after listening to it a couple of times when I was two-and-a-half years old.
It was really fun. Well, Bobby was just basically a folk singer. He didn’t play with any bands or anything, like all the rest of us. Just played his guitar and sang his songs.
In Van Halen there were moments, like in some of the ballads, I put my heart and soul into those records. Those lyrics when I sang ’em, I gave myself goosebumps.
The voice I have now, I got the first time I sang in a movement meeting, after I got out of jail… and I’d never heard it before in my life.
I grew up listening to popular music. My father was a Peruvian folk singer. He played the guitar at home. He sang songs with a waltzing rhythm, yet you can still hear the Spanish influences. I accompanied him to his performances.
I wish I was more of a song-and-dance girl. I sang in a show once. I wish I could be in ‘Hair.’
I’ve done the Kennedy Center many times. I’ve sang for Marian Anderson. I’ve sang for Marion Williams. I’ve sang for Lionel Hampton.
