- If there is anything I would tell anybody in this profession, it is never believe your own press.
- Do not believe your own publicity. Sussing out who your real friends are is full-time work. Every scum bag, every drug dealer, every chicken hawk wants a piece of you. When you've got that sort of power at that young age, and everything at your doorstep, you put out that bad boy image. At that age, testosterone, hormones, all of the money, you see what else you can get away with ... You can't stop. You want to continue to taste, and sometimes that's crazy, stupid things.
- I think part of my drug use was that I didn't want to get older. I wanted to stay that rebellious 18-year-old, just thinking I was superman or, you know, indestructible. But things catch up to you. Fame is a drug not only to oneself but to others as well.
- My mom didn't understand, you know. It was partially her fault. You don't allow a 14 or 15-year-old kid to go on the road without parental guidance. The bartenders knew who I was, knew how old I was, but no one said no.
- My career ended musically, as far as the producers were concerned, when the five-year contract was over and I was, like, 21 or 22, whereas I was trying to let them in on my vision to grow. In the teen idol world, the longest a teen idol can last - unless they change and become an adult with their music - is five years. You go from 16 to maybe 21, and then by 21 you're already having sex ... and that changes your whole world. Your music changes, the things you like change. One thing is puppy love; the next thing is lust. In the teen idol world, it's puppy love. New wave music was happening. Disco wasn't going to last, first of all, and that sort of like puppy-love style wasn't going to last either. Like I said, you grow up and start having sex. Your tastes change. You become more mature ... They just didn't see it, and my contract was up and I said, "See you later."
- The last time I went to Japan, three or four years ago, was the last time I did any of that material. Even then, I refused to do them the regular way. I did a blues version of a disco song. That was a tough one. I wasn't feeling so good then. I was in the middle of a kick. Oh, man. The things we do to ourselves.
- It changed my life big time. Oddly enough, even after the car accident, the "teen idolism" continued for awhile, but not to the same degree. Whether that was a part of it or not, I don't know. That was a big lesson for me because I was 17 when that happened. That was like three days before my 18th birthday. It was a tough situation. I knew that even though we were both at fault for what we were doing and for being in a vehicle, because he was going to drive but I drove.
- Everything was absolutely perfect up until '84. And '84 was when the Scotti Brothers made the mistake of telling Paramount and Universal that I didn't want to sign to a two-picture deal after doing The Outsiders. They started their own production company with me doing a movie about ... foosball. Are you out of your fricking minds? I just did The Outsiders and you're having me do a B-movie about foosball now? I knew how we had to make my crossover to adulthood. But the people who were in charge, supposedly, had no intention of ever letting me have any kind of say in anything. I would have made a better choice than believe what I was told - that I had no other offers and nothing else came in. They were greedy and wanted to start a production company with me.
- The perks of being a teen idol are great, but I don't miss it a lot.
- Nobody ever came up to me and said, 'Hey kid, can you sing?' It was just, 'Hey kid, do you wanna make a record?' They already had their marketing down: I was the full California image, a blond, somewhat androgynous-looking pretty boy, a full-on skateboarder and surfer, actually living that lifestyle.
- Even when I was in it and it seemed enormous, I knew that there is no longevity to the teen idol business. The kids that are digging your music - and I was the age of the people buying it - it's a pubescent thing where you have sexual fantasies, but when you get a boyfriend and your music tastes change, you don't listen to that person anymore. It's a short period of someone's life.
- I made a point of stepping away from it for a while, from all of the hoopla because the glare was too bright. It was too much.
- [on Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star (2003)] You should be able to poke a certain amount of fun at yourself.
- I would actually do it again. It is such a rare thing to be able to do it. Obviously, you wish you had the information you had now.
- I'm an ex-heroin addict. I know I can beat it. I have to.
- When you've got that sort of power at that young age, and everything at your doorstep, you put out that bad boy image. At that age, testosterone, hormones, all of the money, you see what else you can get away with.
- [on Nicollette Sheridan] Even when I wasn't with Nicollette, I knew we would get back together. My reputation as a playboy was well-deserved, I guess. But until Nicollette, I hadn't really found a woman who was my equal. She made me work for her love.
- I'm never going to hit 'teen idol' again and I don't want to. I'd rather be behind the scenes.
- The hardest thing was the music I was doing. I had no control of the music. They wanted me to continue doing teen idol stuff ... The average lifespan of a teen idol is five years. You have to change musically. Bubble gum pop was good for the first time you have sex. They didn't want to give the OK on some really good music. It was the frustration of being signed to that label. I was depressed. My heroes and A&R guys on the bus were doing drugs so I was doing drugs.
- [on his autobiography "Idol Truth"] I'm writing it now because I think I can finally make sense of what happened to me over the years. I've thought about it for a long time, but I just needed the right amount of distance from all these events. It's not all going to be pretty, but it's going to be honest.
- It's so easy for a 17-year-old to sound pretentious, but I really love my career. We started in shack flats when I was 5, and we've been moving up ever since. I suppose there are a lot of ways to grow up that are satisfying. I happen to like the way I did it.
- I really don't know if the teen idol stuff helps or hurts. My gut feeling is that it's just something I will pass through on the way to something else. People like Shaun and me have worked at acting and singing for years and years. We're professionals, and I have the feeling that guys like us are going to be the leading men of the future.
- People are always trying to sneak around and take pictures of our games, but we throw them out. Real status these days is not cars or houses - it's owning your own soccer team.
- I don't think I missed anything. Most of my friends are in the business and I relate to them very well.
- I sang, but it wasn't me 100 percent.... And I didn't feel like I was being heard. No one wanted to hear what I had to say. As long as people were buying my records, it didn't matter. And the music was changing - it never stayed the same. I wanted to be an adult artist with longevity. And yet I was made to record these oldies. Disco was on its way out. There were so many other things I wanted to do, but they just wanted me to be this California surfer boy, the Tiger Beat cover star. I wasn't even into surf music. I wanted to do more original things. I just wasn't given the chance... I think I was trying to mask a lot of feelings of not being true to myself. I wasn't allowed to have any say in what I was doing, in my own career. So I had to mask that feeling... But narcotics wasn't my entire life. I know I've had trouble with it. I made some bad decisions. But there has always been more to my story.
- It was normal for every artist back in the day to lip-sync for certain events where you wanted things to be perfect. But not a concert - not a full concert. That's straight-up lying. It's horrible. I don't think someone purchasing a ticket deserved that... I thought I was a decent performer. I looked up to performers like Mick Jagger and, like many people, I was inspired by his energy. The performance was me. But the singing wasn't 100 percent me. I think I became a decent singer. I don't think I was a natural-born singer like a lot of people are. But I wanted to do it properly.
- You know, there just aren't a lot of good memories with dad. He left when I was 5, I saw him for a half-hour when I was 16 and then I didn't see him again until my 40s. Then I became his caretaker and it was all about that. He wasn't able to give me what I wanted. And I get it. There just wasn't enough time, I suppose. But right now, I'm just taking things one day at a time. I'm not in jail and I'm not in rehab. It took a long time to get to a point where I don't have to self-medicate myself to escape the pain. That feels good. Hard drugs are a difficult thing, especially if you've done it for a while. I play music because I love it. I will always love it. But I'm not in a rush to do more with it unless it's absolutely right. It has to be as real as possible.
- Roland has passed away. I saw him when we did "Behind the Music," which was a weird situation because they sprung it on me. And it was an emotional thing for me... It's ironic, Roland was supposed to drive but I stopped him. I knew how he drove - he was into racing - and I was scared... That accident was just a perfect storm of bulls-t. It was a horrible lesson.
- I look back at my life and there are many things I got to experience that other people never get to do. And I'm grateful for that. I just wish it could have been a better situation. I wish I had made better decisions... My father just passed a few months ago. I'm still beat up from that because I really wanted to get to know him. I wanted to understand so many things I never got answers to.
- For starters, when I was a teen idol, my managers would lie and say I was sick from exhaustion when, in reality, they wanted to make sure my shows were sold-out. So here I was, pretending to be sick, living this lie, just so that I can embody this perfect image of what they wanted me to be. It was wrong. These were things I wasn't allowed to admit... When I was a young man, I was offered this chance to have a music career. But instead of doing it the right way - training with a singing coach - my voice was processed to the point where it barely even sounded like me. You hear me singing on the records, but it wasn't just me alone.
- I don't think I was a very mature 16-year-old. I became mature very quickly because I was always surrounded by adults who were drinking and doing coke. I was a child, but being treated as an adult... And all of this was coming out of my pocket.
- You know, I probably have the greatest fan base that I could ever imagine for myself. They have stuck with me through thick and thin. And as you know, I've gotten myself in plenty of bad situations. There was a lot of bad decision-making. But at the same time, I didn't have the parental guidance that I should have at that time.
- It didn't make sense to me. As a matter of fact, there are a couple of songs that if you listen carefully, it's just not me at all. My vocals are mixed in there but it's just not me. You can tell the differences in the voices. But finally being able to share this meant I can now have a clear conscience... The singer, Jim Haas, has since passed away, unfortunately.
- [Management] weren't really in it for the long haul, I don't believe. Even though that's not what said in the interview [at the end of the book]. And we kept that verbatim, word for word of what was asked to him and what he responded with. It's obviously untrue. You don't explode with gold and platinum records if you're not generating money for a company.
- Think of the future. Think further ahead than the night in front of you. Be a little more respectful of what you have and don't be so willing to gamble that.
- I didn't want the book to come from a bitter or angry place. I also had some issues that I wanted to have completely cleared up before I got into a book; if anything, it would be sobriety. But also, my dad just passed away a few months ago. I kind of wanted to get it out before he passed, but I missed that by a little bit. I don't think there was (any one thing) in particular (to write the book), it just felt right.
- I really would have liked to have gotten deeper on Behind the Music into the situation with the management more so than the drug thing. There's obviously things that I regret and one of them obviously being the car crash. That was very difficult and I beat myself up for it, and quite deservedly so. And as uncomfortable as it may be, it could've been either one of us who was in the passenger seat. I didn't want to get into the car with him because oddly enough he had been drinking. Which I had, too.
- I still wasn't a singer. Not yet anyway. I knew my limitations. I knew how many times they layered my vocals to try to give me a "sound". And I knew who good singers were. Robert Plant. Freddie Mercury. Elton John. Those were singers. (Yet, those guys all used layered vocals, too).
- Within that same year or two, my career - at least as a teen idol - would effectively be over. Samson lost his hair and all of his power went with it; that was kind of similar for me. I was so defined by my hair.
- I don't want to live forever, but I got some more time in me and I've got more to say and more to do, for sure.
- [on his 2006 police mugshot] Everybody freaked out because the hair was gone. Guess what? That happens sometimes. When people stop me on the street and say nasty things about that, I don't know what to tell them. It's called getting older, and it's okay. We have this cultural thing that no celebrities are ever supposed to grow old before our eyes.
- When I was a young man, I was offered this chance to have a music career. But instead of doing it the right way - training with a singing coach - my voice was processed to the point where it barely even sounded like me. You hear me singing on the records, but it wasn't just me alone. If you listen carefully, it's just not me at all. My vocals are mixed in there but it's just not me.
- [on Nicolette Sheridan] We were both getting so much attention, and I was immature and very jealous then. I didn't understand that you can't stop everyone from looking at your girl. She was outgoing, funny, fun, athletic - everything I wanted. When we got along, it was perfect; but when we didn't, we cleared rooms. It was that crazy - there was no in-between. The passion was insane.
- Elaine was my best friend who I was simply in love with as a friend and became romantically, biblically, if you will, involved ... the person that I really wanted to spend the rest of my life with. That would have been the person I would have had a child with. And I haven't met anyone I feel that way about since.
- [on his sobriety]: I had a 90-day sentence in county jail. I was in court-ordered rehab before that, and then my mom visited and told me she had stage IV lung cancer. I said, 'I'm leaving to take care of her - nobody lives with her.' So dealing with that, I started using again. So it was like, 'Cuff him, bring him in,' and I did the 90 days, and that was it.
- I was on a public appearance tour in Sydney, Australia, and they had to fly me in by helicopter and then I jumped into an armored car and drove into the theater by back door. I've tried using a lim there before, but the fans almost tipped it over. I guess it's an adrenalin push for them. They just freak out. It's very weird.
- There's a particular track (I Was Looking for Someone to Love) that doesn't even sound like me at all. I would even possibly say I wasn't even on that track. And to me, that IS fraud. That's like a Milli Vanilli situation, the difference being, of course, mine was blended many times with myself and somebody else.
- I think I was a good performer from the get-go but I wish they had offered me singing lessons before ever making a record and doing the typical punching in a sentence here or there or words or whatever.
- [on "Celebrity rehab with Dr Drew"] They asked to get some footage of me using, and I said, 'I haven't been using. They said, 'We really have to get footage of you using.' Anyway, I was easily talked into showing them.
- I've kept every photo or letter that a young lady sent, telling me about being on their walls and kissing me good night before they went to bed. It's very surreal and a bit embarrassing, but how flattering! I can't thank [my fans] enough, because I'm still able to do something I enjoy and get paid for it.
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