I was a pioneer in MTV and I was there from the very beginning. So I saw how that developed and how loose it was and how much fun it was in its looseness. And I was influenced a lot by that.

Being at college, I think that's the time when you really start searching for things outside yourself.

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

I was very inspired by my mother. She was a vocal teacher and sang in a band, and my first memories of her were going out with her on the local circuit.

I returned to upstate NY where I just laid in bed for days with a fever that just wouldn't go away. After more of this, I grew increasingly sure that this was not simply the flu!

The biggest honor of my career was when I won R&B Artist of the Year back in the 1970s. I look at that as a major honor.

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.