Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Songs used to be short, then they became longer, and now they're getting shorter. But otherwise, music is about a beat and a message. If the beat gets to the audience, and the message touches them, you've got a hit.
Basically, radio hasn't changed over the years. Despite all the technical improvements, it still boils down to a man or a woman and a microphone, playing music, sharing stories, talking about issues - communicating with an audience.
I just felt it was my job to show that there is no easy way to success, and that anyone who gets even just one Top 40 hit deserves their moment in the sun. I accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. That is the timeless thing.
Even when I do commercials, I try to tell a story about the product. With music, I try to tell the story of the person's struggle for success. And I believe every word I say. I never read anything on the air I don't believe in. I think people sense that about me, and they respond to it.
They are going to be playing Shaggy and Scooby-Doo for eons and eons, and they're going to forget Casey Kasem - unless they happen to step on his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I'll be one of those guys people say, 'Who's that?' about. And someone else will say, 'He's just some guy who used to be on the radio.'
If I were doing a real rock show, slapping the phone book in time to the music, grooving with the songs, then it would matter to know how I felt about what I was playing. You can't fake it in that situation. But I'm just counting them down as they appear on the chart, 1 through 40. What really matters is what I say between the songs.
Some of the things that I do, I think are very important and much more important than the radio show or the television show that I do or anything else that I do. I think right at the top of the list is the basic thing. And of course the basic thing is to hopefully stop people from killing anything. And to create a non-violent diet for themselves, because a non-violent world has roots in a non-violent diet.