Every so often, if I'm in a melancholy mood, I'll sing 'Desperado' in my shows. I'll sit alone at the piano and play it as a solo. The song feels like an old friend - except now it's saying, 'You were a desperado once, but you worked your way out of it.'
Bill Medley
I don't know what I would do if it wasn't music, 'cause I'm really a one trick pony.
The Righteous Brothers started out in Orange County, California. It was about the whitest place in the country, but the black marines from the nearby base heard there were two guys singing rhythm and blues, so they came down to hear us. At the end of our songs they'd yell out, 'That's righteous, brother!' and that's how we got our name.
The Righteous Brothers were purely rhythm and blues, black music.
Opening for The Beatles in San Francisco at the Cow Palace was great. It was terrific fun to do. The tour itself, I must say, wasn't a whole lot of fun, artistically. It was just more kind of interesting.
The friendship I had with Elvis began to take shape in 1968 when I was recording in Memphis. I'd record during the day, and Elvis would send one of his guys over to bring me to Graceland at night. Everything you've heard about Graceland during Elvis's glory days is true and then some.
I'm a Santa Ana boy from 1940 to all my life. And Santa Ana was different only in the fact that Orange County was just small. Hell, I used to ride my motorcycle through the orange groves, and now it's tracts of homes.
There's this Bruno Mars guy. I met him in Hawaii when was doing Elvis imitations at the age of about five or six years old. There's a lot of old school in him. He's got a depth that I just love.
It was so odd to have young kids singing 'Lovin' Feelin' because they knew it from 'Top Gun.'
All my memories of being in Las Vegas with Bobby were great. Frank Sinatra brought us to the Sands Hotel in 1965. When we worked that lounge, it was a great lounge. I think it was bigger than the showroom. We were two 25-year-old dumb kids from Orange County in Las Vegas with The Rat Pack.
That was the toughest thing I ever had to do: tell my son that his mum was gone. I was a bachelor living on the beach, but I had to pull it together very quick for my boy.
Elvis was a great guy. We'd just horse around together or go to see a movie. He drove me around Graceland in a golf cart. He was a fan of our music and was curious about how I sounded so black.
George Klein says that Elvis had five real friends outside of his circle, and I was blessed to be one of them. I spent a lot of time with Elvis in Vegas and at Graceland.
It's the audiences that inspire me to keep going. I feel that we all grew up together. The majority now are the people who were raised on the music in the Sixties.
I'm kind of a nervous guy. I know on television I look like I'm half asleep, but inside I'm going about 100 miles an hour.
Throughout our career, people thought Bobby and I disliked each other. That's not true, but our relationship was very complicated. We were like brothers - and brothers don't always see eye to eye.
The Righteous Brothers got so heavy because of the dramatic hit records like 'Lovin' Feelin.' Bobby and I just felt like we were a couple of Orange County guys who were just having a great time singing rock n' roll, and then, boy, it became something else.
I had fans, and the industry and everybody saying, 'Keep the Righteous Brothers going; keep the music alive,' and I really didn't want to do that. I had sung with a couple of guys who would supposedly be really good Bobby Hatfields, and I thought, 'Oh geez, it's really anti-climatic.'
Every time I go on stage, it's like a first date. I put on my best clothes, shave, and get as handsome as I can. Then I say the cutest things I know to say, and I become the very best Bill Medley I can be because I want to win my date over. My audience is the date that I want to impress every time.
For Bobby and I to sing R&B and sound black was probably the stupidest thing we could do. White radio stations wouldn't play us because they thought we were black. Black stations wouldn't play us because they thought we were white. Any time you break ground, you go against the grain.
We were so busy that right before we recorded the follow-up single to 'Lovin' Feelin' I had a nervous breakdown. I just folded. I had to stay in bed for a couple of months and rest.
I know there are a lot of tough stories out there about Sinatra, but he was so sweet to Bobby and me. He even had us replace him one night in the main room. He didn't get Sammy or Dean; he said, 'I want the kids to do it.' Man, what an honor.
First off, you can't replace Bobby Hatfield. I was just blessed to be able to sing with maybe the greatest singer in the world as a first tenor.
Little Richard was it for me, man. Later, it was Ray Charles and Bobby 'Blue' Bland, B.B. King.
Passion: It's what separates a singer from an entertainer. I hope I have passion for my music, my family, and my friends until they start shoveling dirt on my face.
Man, we were so opposite. One guy sang high, the other low. One guy tall, one short. We were like a quartet without the two guys in the middle. If you were putting two guys together to make hit records, you wouldn't have picked Bobby and me.
When 'You've Lost that Lovin' Feeling' hit, we were doing a show called 'Shindig!' and the Righteous Brothers suddenly became big business.
I just can't stand being in airports anymore. I just can't stand it.
The Old Vegas is gone. It's not that it's necessarily better or worse; it's just totally different.
The reason I still love performing is that people my age, a little younger and a little older, show up to relive that thing that made them so happy all those years ago. And as long as they show up, I'll keep on keepin' on till I keel over.
It sounds odd, but I was a singer and started writing songs, and I didn't have anything in mind. Maybe it crossed my mind that it would be cool to have a hit record and a career, but that was so out of reach that I don't think I thought about it that much.
There were moments that Bobby and I would come offstage after performing in front of 20,000 people and say, 'Wow, how did that happen?' It's been a blessed life.
The emotion of a song's lyrics has always been what grabs me deeply.
I think 'Lovin' Feelin' was probably one of the most - probably in '64 and '65, one of the more dramatic love songs for these kids to grab hold of. I mean, they had been listening to, you know, kind of cute songs, and 'Lovin' Feelin' was just a strong, powerful song.
There was nothing about Bobby I didn't like... I guess I never understood why he took a left-hand turn when real success came. We got along better from 1990 until his death in 2003. I had accepted him for who he was.
When you have the biggest record in the country, everybody wants you; everybody needs you, and they need you now.
