What characterized the whole punk scene for me in 1977 was there was no racism or sexism. It was an anarchy of -isms, and a matter of abolishing it all.

The people who are making a lot of money and eating at McDonald's and watching MTV and have square eyeballs, they're over there. And then maybe there's like five other people left in America and I'm just waiting for them to come up with something interesting.

A ballad once in a while doesn't go amiss

I don't like to think that I'm on a treadmill of album, tour, promotion and all that.

I'm not saying I'd already done anything, actually, but I'd passed my experimental streak.

I was never too interested in high school. I mean, I never went to a dance, I never went out on a date, I never went steady. It became pretty awful for me. Except, of course, I could go see bands, and that was the kick. I used to go to Cleveland just to see any band. So I was in love a lot of the time, but mostly with guys in bands that I had never met. For me, knowing that Brian Jones was out there, and later that Iggy Pop was out there, made it kind of hard for me to get too interested in the guys that were around me. I had, uh, bigger things in mind.

How much did you get for your soul?