All I Ever Wanted Quotes

“I met and talked with both Suzi and Patti Quatro, the Detroit musicians who started playing in bands in the ’60s, and they’d had the same experience: most all guy musicians took them seriously. I would find this to hold true as I continued in the music business; the skepticism and sexism came from the non-artists, whether the audience was hootin’ to “take it off” or suits in the offices were telling you there was no audience for your female band.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“It took a really long time to realize that my plans for other people rarely worked out.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“We could deal with just about any part of this new life, together, a girl gang, exclusive to the max. Bring it on, world, anything goes. Except for actual feelings. Those were left to each other to manage privately.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“My individual relationships within the band were fluid affairs, with constructs that changed over time and circumstance. In the years we spent together, I would come to know every facial expression and recognize each of my friends’ singular quirks.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“All the books I had read paid off—being well read is always an educational ace in the hole. It makes you think better, write better, figure stuff out better.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“I didn’t know about all that, only that Texas had ZZ Top. The show, my first rock concert, took place in a huge outdoor field called Kings Village and featured five bands. It had rained the day before, and I ended up blasted drunk, falling around in the mud, and throwing up next to a row of reeking portable toilets before ZZ Top even made it to the stage. I thought it was one of the best days ever.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“It seems like when I take care of myself, show up, do the work—even if the work is about letting go and moving on—that good stuff comes up behind me.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“For the first time, I left way before the party was over. Riding home alone in a stretch limo, just me and a shitload of feelings, all without buffering, enhancing, numbing, or burying. Being real was the toughest, most rock ’n’ roll thing I had ever done.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“I could tell, even over the phone, that sobriety had brought Charlotte home to herself—her best self.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“learned something there: there’s more good stuff about eating a meal out than drinking alcohol. The atmosphere felt nice, being waited on was a great thing, the food tasted excellent, and not having to do dishes or clean up was sublime. Who knew? Apparently, tons of people knew.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“I didn’t know humility and service are the essence of living in the light of God; I just wanted to stay sober.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“In the early days my worst qualities kept me sober—pride, perfectionism, obsession.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“When comprehension blows through the clouds of the addicted mind, when the understanding is bound to an impulse to stop, it’s like a mystical connection occurring—maybe even a divine intervention. Free will exerts its own power, but it’s a far lesser choice when one can choose between that and the divine. Ideas”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“The X factor is an organic endowment of chance. Bands without the magic make it too, but none I’ve ever been in. Showing up and trying is all I knew how to do, but now I wondered if I even knew how to do that right.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“The “controlling” method meant drinking was always on my mind, whether I did it or not. Control took a lot of mental energy, and invariably there would be the blowout where I stayed up drinking, doing coke, and reveling in the excess.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“Playing music is the one thing that puts me squarely in the present moment; it’s as Zen as I’ll ever be. Once I’m focusing on what I’m doing and what my bandmates are doing, I’m gone.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“A creative person gets used to subsisting on unequal parts of passion, delusion, and relentless hope. No”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“Gina always looked cool and in command behind the drum kit. As a Go-Go, she arguably had more influence than any of us in inspiring young girls to pick up an instrument.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“had no idea how quickly a band could turn into a money-generating commodity for so many other people.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“I walked them to their car, stopping at the security exit to hug my dad goodbye. He held me tightly and spoke quietly, just between us: “I was wrong. You have done great for yourself.” It was an unexpected admission, and I didn’t realize how much I wanted to hear it. I had done everything on my own and he knew it.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“Some guys I knew in bands used touring as a way to get laid night after night—that sure wasn’t part of our trip. The Go-Go’s didn’t have time for sex.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“Connecting with my band, executing our parts, locked together, a part of a whole. Connecting with the crew, making sure everything goes smoothly. Connecting with the audience—everyone rocking out together. I had wanted this kind of connection for so long.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“Sometimes I’ve wondered what it would be like to re-record Beauty and the Beat the way I would like it to sound, with thick, full tones and texture. But then I remember the ephemeral spirit infusing the recording process, the anticipation and joy of a fleeting time, and I know something else was captured that could never be reproduced.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“Asking how he could tolerate my drunkenness while being sober, he simply said, “Because you’re sweet and smart when you don’t drink.” I thought I was pretty fucking great when I drank too.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“You couldn’t have found a scrappier bunch of young girls. Patching and piecing things together, making up what we didn’t know, and merging a spin-off feminist thrust just by doing whatever the hell we wanted.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“People took what they liked or needed from punk and fused elements with their own sensibilities, and the music world already had started exploding with the freedom it brought.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“There’s nothing like your first band, and you kind of spend the rest of your music career wondering why it has to ever be any different.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“I hit the strings with a pick he pulled from his jeans, a perfect blasting E chord that made the walls shake. The sound was raw and dirty and loud. It eclipsed every bad thing that had ever happened to me, things forgotten and pushed away, every sad, hurtful betrayal nuked by the grit of circuits, pickups, and tubes. It was the most empowering thing I had done in my entire life. From that moment, I knew.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“There’s always a crack in the wall of bad where the good can start to seep in. You just have to notice it and let it happen.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

“Rock ’n’ roll, the superhero to a new generation of misfits, was my lifesaver. A magical conduit to a celebration of outrageousness, sexuality, and decadence came through the music. I could hear it, see it, and feel it. I knew Bowie or Marc Bolan would never have fit in where I was either. The same guys who dug their music would have tortured them as schoolmates.”
― Kathy Valentine, All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir