You have moments of clarity, things become clear to you that you didn't understand before. But there's never any making ends meet or finding any time of longstanding peace of mind about something.

The drummer in my first band was killed in Vietnam. He kind of signed up and joined the marines. Bart Hanes was his name. He was one of those guys that was jokin' all the time, always playin' the clown.

Until I realized that rock music was my connection to the rest of the human race, I felt like I was dying, for some reason, and I didn't know why.

T-Bone Burnett once said that much of rock music is simply someone going wahhh daddy.

I studied other singers, so I would learn how to phrase, and learn how to breathe. And the main thing was, I learned how to inhabit my song.

I think life goes through a cycle of losing and refinding yourself all the time. Everyone has disappointments all the time, some of them pretty small, some of them pretty big.

My image had always been very heterosexual, very straight. So it was a nice experience for me, a chance to clarify my own feelings about gay and lesbian civil rights.