Many things have been said about and by the man, here are a few notable quotes, both good and bad.


  "I guess you could say I've always been country;
maybe more so than a lot of the other acts you
listen to today."
David Allan Coe, liner notes from For The Record

  "Son, this beats all. Any cowboy sanger who can walk into a Texas dance hall floutin' a whorehouse suit and silver spurs a damn earring and then get up onstage and say, 'If you don't wanta listen then fuck you,' and don't nobody heave a bottle at him by then,
then he's got somethin."
"Champ" from interview with Chet Flippo Rolling Stone Magazine, July 18, 1974

 "And any cowboy sanger that can do all that and then tell a bad joke about a 65-year-old whore with the womenfolk here and still don't nobody make a move to straighten him out, then he's got balls. And mister, I'll tell you what it is: That boy up there, he puts me in the mind of Merle Haggard. He's gonna be a good 'un."
"Champ" from interview with Chet Flippo Rolling Stone Magazine, July 18, 1974

 "I took the hardest possible route that you could take, and I still overcame and succeeded. There is no doubt in my mind I would have been a Kenny Rogers or a Willie Nelson kind of celebrity if I had gone in the other direction...In another words (if) I would have taken the easy way, the path of least resistance."
David Allan Coe (as told to Michael Bane) Country Music Magazine, 1985

 "I've written songs about things that nobody else has ever written about."
David Allan Coe, 1985

 "Forget everything you've ever heard about David Allan Coe. When he comes in the studio,he's all business. He's one of the most serious and thoroughly prepared recording artists I've ever worked with. He knows exactly what songs he wants to do and how he wants to do them. He's always very easy to work with and totally professional."
Billy Sherill

 "Mel (Tillis) said he'd give me one of his old suits if I'd wear it. I told him, man, I'll wear that sonuvabitch till it falls off. I loved it. I had a beard and long hair and I wore my rhinestone suit around and people started calling me the Rhinestone Cowboy to the Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy after Tanya's (Tucker's hit) record (Coe's 'Would You Lay
With Me'). Everybody started saying, well, this cat's not as dumb as people think he is."
David Allan Coe, 1974

 "More than anything else, ex-convict David Allan Coe is still a prisoner of his own self-created past."
Michael Bane Country Music Magazine,Mid 80's

 "I think David sometimes doesn't know which way to go. If he writes and records in a straight country vein he could probably do a lot better in the charts. But if he stops doing the kind of (hardcore) music he does - the off-the-wall stuff, even some of the x-rated stuff, he might lose that large cult following that keeps his album sales so high."
Billy Sherrill, Early 80's

 "I've never wanted anybody to like me because I had long hair or short hair, or that they liked the way I dressed or they liked the way I dressed or they liked the way I smile...I wasn't trying to be cool...In fact, if it had been up to me I would have had them take a black screen and drop in front of me on stage
and just let the people hear the music...I wanted the music to stand on its own."
David Allan Coe June 1987 Interview with Otto Kitsinger