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?

Smokey Robinson is one of my heroes as a singer and songwriter, a major influence on my own music from the very start.

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.

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.

Americans think that if you're popular, there must be something wrong with you.

I have to say I have never been comfortable with somebody else telling me what to do - in any way.

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.