Here Comes the Night Quotes

“To these old hands, rock and roll sounded like musical illiteracy, the undignified, untutored keenings of woebegone Negroes, hicks, and juvenile delinquents.”
― Joel Selvin, Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues

“Songwriter Ellie Greenwich laughed at the idea that they wrote about their own lives. “We wouldn’t do that,” she said. These songwriters were not self-conscious artists exploring their inner lives. They operated under an industrial mandate. Their music’s appeal was designed to sell records; any self-serving “artistic” motives were pointless. Under such strictures, however, these men and women made magnificent music, these glorious records, filled with imagination, wonder and beauty.”
― Joel Selvin, Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues

“Berns made fifty-one pop chart singles in seven years;”
― Joel Selvin, Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues

“Berns wasn’t the greatest of the era, although his best work was as good as anybody’s. But his unique voice as a songwriter, producer, and record man is so deeply ingrained in the vocabulary of pop music it has become common parlance. Songs of his such as “Twist and Shout,” “My Girl Sloopy,” or “Piece of My Heart” have been covered, quoted, cannibalized, used as salvage parts, and recycled so many times, his touch has just dissolved into the literature. His name may be lost, but his music is everywhere.”
― Joel Selvin, Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues

“The story of Bert Berns lies buried under layers of history. Much of his music has gone unheard since its original release.”
― Joel Selvin, Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues

“When I first called Jerry Wexler, the man everybody most associates with Berns’s career, and told him I planned to work on this book, Wexler’s affable tone disappeared. “I’ll tell you this,” he said. “I don’t know where he’s buried, but if I did, I would piss on his grave.”
― Joel Selvin, Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues