When I first started in rock, I had a big guy's audience for my early records. I had a very straight image, particularly through the mid '80s.

All I try to do is write music that feels meaningful to me, that has commitment and passion behind it.

The school system only recognizes one type of intelligence. There are so many different types of intelligence.

When you get fat and lose your hunger. That is when you know the sellout has happened.

There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music but it is a critical, questioning and often angry patriotism.

So I bought a forty-four magnum, it was solid steel cast, and in the blessed name of Elvis, well I just let it blast 'til my TV lay in pieces.

Somewhere along the way, the idea, which I think was initially to get some fair transaction between people, went out the window. And what came in was, the most you can get and the least you can give. That's why cars are the way they are nowadays. It's just an erosion of all the things that were true and right about the original idea.