When you have that first flash of what you think is going to be a great idea-from the mouth, from the hands-that's an amazing feeling. I don't think anything's quite as good as that.

If Paul McCartney tells me that so-and-so song is his favorite song, what do I care? What do I care what anybody else says?

I grew up in a very racially integrated place called Pottstown. It was an agricultural / industrial town which has since become a suburb of Philadelphia. I grew up basically in a black neighborhood.

I definitely dislike pomposity and artifice. I hope that I'm not that. Once I write a song, it belongs to the world, and the way people perceive it, it's cool.

Any song I don't feel good about, I shelve. Anything you ever hear me sing, it's because I want to.

I was just like a 21st century person waiting to be born, and this is the medium that I thrive in. And I feel stronger now than I did any time since I've been a teenager - I mean, musically, creatively.

Around 1974, I graduated into the occult, and spent a sold six or seven years immersed in the Kabala and the Chaldean, Celtic, and Druidic traditions I also became fascinated with Aleister Crowley, the nineteenth-century magician who shared these beliefs.