I found so much fun in the light shows and the multimedia shows of the hippies. That was when I was a student in the 1960s, and I was in New York, so I learned how to deal with writing, recording sound of other people, performance art - because that was a new territory, and I liked everything that was new and provocative. That interested me more than becoming anything specific.

I never wanted to have a profession, and I've succeeded in not having one, or if I did have one it never paid, or it's never been especially long-term.

I had already been a young singer. And once, as a profession, I was a young singer, what you would call a soprano in England, but I was an alto in singing Jewish music in bar mitzvahs and weddings and synagogues throughout New York City because, after Israel, New York is probably the biggest Jewish community in the world.

I hung around hippie-ish kind of people and, first of all, they never made any money. If you never make any money, you never have to declare any profession!

I played to 20,000 people every day because people were walking on 5th Ave going to and from their jobs, and my sounds were bathing them in all kinds of dissonance, consonance, resonance, and things like that.

People never heard bells in Western music sounding really cataclysmic. You hear that more in Russian music or in Asian, Indonesian traditions.

Not that I have anything against music now, but I just hated being an anything. I don't know why.