If you were a painter and a rock and roll musi­cian and weren't established in either - to be an artist today you have to be as much a businessman to suc­ceed, you have to spend an equal amount of time doing business as you spend doing your craft.

We probably, as primitive people, made music before we actually had a language, and that's where language comes from.

I don't mind if my skull ends up on a shelf as long as it's got my name on it.

I get myself a gig somewhere, whether it's in a club, whether it's in a bar, it doesn't matter, and I just work on New Year's Eve because I always feel it's very symbolic for me for the next year, for the new year.

Capote wrote every day. He said that's the only way, you have to sit down every day and do it.

I love the ACLU and I'm concerned now, especially when it comes to our rights, with current politics and the religious community and the Conservative majority or minority - I don't know who they are.

That undercurrent of the forbidden was always a part of rock.