Quotes by Alex Chilton

A lot of people seem to be interseted in garage bands from the '60's, and I find some of it entertaining, but most of it doesn't hit home for me nearly as much as listening to Jimmy Reed or Howlin' Wolf or someone like that.

Drugs were pretty easy to quit taking. I was never addicted to anything to begin with. But then, liquor-I had to wait about another six years before I finally got around to quitting that. I'm sure glad I did.

I guess that my life has been a series of flukes in the record business. The first thing I ever did was the biggest record that I'll ever have.

I learned Lightnin' Hopkins style, and John Lee Hooker's style, Jimmy Reed's style, and Fred McDowell a bit. It's been a part of my environment around here for a really long time.

I never thought of myself as being a good songwriter. There are a ton of other people that are good songwriters, but I don't think I'm in the club. What I do well is perform, sometimes sing pretty good, and accompany myself well and arrange fairly well.

I probably write 10 things to every one that I want to use. It's easy for me to write something that's so poppy that it's wrong for me. If I was 22 years old... it's easy for me to write something that's less mature than I am or ought to be. I'm looking for something that acts my age.

I spent a few years here in Memphis, in the late '70s and early '80s, where I was studying a lot of country blues players and their styles. So it seems like every record I'll do, I will appropriate these blues styles that I remember.

If you're writing anything decent, it's in you, it's your spirit coming out. If it's not an expression of how a person genuinely feels, then it's not a good song done with any conviction.

Sometimes I'll come up with a lick that I really love, and I'll try to put the right words to it for years. Suddenly something comes to me that works just right.

The more alone I am, the more focused I can get. I've written things with people, some of which I liked and others I think are total travesties. Collaborating is trying to make a piece of music and get someone else to come up with the ideas. What's the fun of that?

When the Box Tops first started out, I couldn't play guitar much at all. Only after we had our first hit records did I start playing.

You can't live your life being upset about things, but it's a lot easier to not be upset about it if you've got enough money yourself. If you're walking around broke and working a job from nine to five or seven to five, and you're really struggling to make ends meet, you start thinking about people who have ripped you off and getting pretty angry at them.