We were so busy that right before we recorded the follow-up single to 'Lovin' Feelin' I had a nervous breakdown. I just folded. I had to stay in bed for a couple of months and rest.
I had fans, and the industry and everybody saying, 'Keep the Righteous Brothers going; keep the music alive,' and I really didn't want to do that. I had sung with a couple of guys who would supposedly be really good Bobby Hatfields, and I thought, 'Oh geez, it's really anti-climatic.'
Elvis was a great guy. We'd just horse around together or go to see a movie. He drove me around Graceland in a golf cart. He was a fan of our music and was curious about how I sounded so black.
The Righteous Brothers got so heavy because of the dramatic hit records like 'Lovin' Feelin.' Bobby and I just felt like we were a couple of Orange County guys who were just having a great time singing rock n' roll, and then, boy, it became something else.
Man, we were so opposite. One guy sang high, the other low. One guy tall, one short. We were like a quartet without the two guys in the middle. If you were putting two guys together to make hit records, you wouldn't have picked Bobby and me.
There's this Bruno Mars guy. I met him in Hawaii when was doing Elvis imitations at the age of about five or six years old. There's a lot of old school in him. He's got a depth that I just love.
The reason I still love performing is that people my age, a little younger and a little older, show up to relive that thing that made them so happy all those years ago. And as long as they show up, I'll keep on keepin' on till I keel over.
All my memories of being in Las Vegas with Bobby were great. Frank Sinatra brought us to the Sands Hotel in 1965. When we worked that lounge, it was a great lounge. I think it was bigger than the showroom. We were two 25-year-old dumb kids from Orange County in Las Vegas with The Rat Pack.
There was nothing about Bobby I didn't like... I guess I never understood why he took a left-hand turn when real success came. We got along better from 1990 until his death in 2003. I had accepted him for who he was.
For Bobby and I to sing R&B and sound black was probably the stupidest thing we could do. White radio stations wouldn't play us because they thought we were black. Black stations wouldn't play us because they thought we were white. Any time you break ground, you go against the grain.
