Bobby Hatfield Quotations

Some people come to our shows and think they're gonna spend the night just listening to love songs, and they're pretty much surprised cause we do a lot of rock and roll.

Rolling Stones, Beatles, we gave them all the break they were looking for. All they needed was a good opening act, and we went out there and performed as well as we could... over 15,000 kids chanting.

Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil wrote a lot of stuff for Phil Spector... we had done all rock and roll and rhythm and blues. I mean, we liked ballads and I suppose we did them OK, but that wasn't where we were emotionally and musically coming from.

With me and Bill... I think we started out with $15 apiece and split the other $20 between the band.

My wife was diagnosed with lupus 16 or 17 years ago, and that's how I kinda got involved in it. I just finished my fifth annual Bobby Hatfield Classic Golf Tournament, and happily I can report that we raised over $52,000. Through the years we've raised not only through the golf tournament, but through other charitable concerts, we've raised over $600,000.

We were working... with Frank Sinatra. He was in the main room, and we were in the lounge. It was a real thrill to meet and actually become friends with people like Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Dean Martin. They were all working the Sands at that time... and Bill and I became... well, not close friends, but at least acquaintances where they knew us by name, and most of them just called us the righteous boys.

As far as our song list... I think between the two of us knew seven songs... for the whole night... we did a lot of variations on those seven songs.

There was James Burton, one of the greatest guitar players around, who played for Elvis years and years. Than there was another guitar player named Glenn Campbell just beginning with us. Billy Preston... he was one of the piano players. Leon Russell was in the band. He was another one of the piano players. We had a lot of people like that just beginning, not even getting any notoriety... they were just in the band and doing recording sessions.