And the whole thing is that you're treated like a step-child. Here it was down here, everything in the black, because they were stealing, basically. Stealing from us old country boys down here.
Because Ritchie Valens WAS the real deal. He was only starting, but in the time he spent in the business, he made big impact. I don't know if anybody could have made a bigger one.
Besides that, I felt guilty. I thought for some reason... I was alive, and Buddy and those boys were dead, and I didn't know how, but somehow I'd caused it.
But Buddy was an upper. He was happy. He loved music, and he was really happy. I don't know... I don't believe in reincarnation at all, but if all that stuff is true, then he might have been on his last time around.
But ya know what, I am a part of something that happened. I'm a part of the music that happened. My voice is one more instrument, is what it is. So that's the way I feel about people who play on sessions.
Chet loved artists. He did. But he was caught up in the system. He had two hats. He had to have 'em because he did two things: he was an artist, and he was an executive.
I mean, I think we're put here on earth to make your own destiny, to begin with. I don't think there's anything you can do this way or that way to change anything.
I was king of the mountain for a long time, well, I don't want that no more. I like to perform every once in a while for people who want to see me, and cut albums of music that is what I'm really about.
It was all devastating. I'd never dealt with losing anyone close to me, and I didn't know where to put it in my life. I was very young then. Buddy taught me so much in such a short time.
Jessi is a great person. She really is. She's been a friend to me all through all my bad times, and she's understood what I was doing. She came up with that one saying, which was great.