Creativity Quote by Bruce Johnston

A perfect little portrait of taste as both confession and quiet power move. Bruce Johnston isn’t trashing The Chambers Brothers; he’s doing something more revealing: granting craft while withholding allegiance. “They make good records” is the polite, musician-to-musician nod, a recognition that the work functions. But “I never could get into” and “couldn’t get behind it” draws a line between technical respect and personal or cultural identification. In pop, that gap is everything.

The phrasing is tellingly inert: no specific complaint, no spicy anecdote, just an inability. That “never could” casts taste as destiny, like a bodily reaction you can’t argue with. It lets Johnston stay above the fray while still signaling membership in a different aesthetic tribe. “Get behind it” hints at more than listening; it’s about endorsement, about the social act of standing with a sound. The Chambers Brothers weren’t just a band; they were a collision of gospel, psychedelia, and Black Southern grit that hit the late-60s rock mainstream with something raw and un-sanitized. To not “get behind” it can read as discomfort with that intensity, or simply the mismatch between Johnston’s polished, harmony-forward pop sensibility and their harder, funkier edge.

There’s also a gatekeeping subtext that’s common in music scenes: you can praise someone’s “records” while implying they don’t belong in your personal canon. It’s the softest way to say, “Not my world,” while keeping your credibility intact.