That's part of the curse: If you're gonna play the song, you better play it. I've tried to phone in 'Jeremy' a few times, and it's tough. It doesn't work.

I just have this deep kind of connection to reality of being like... in a way, I feel like a dock worker. I want to stay in connection with my dock-worker side, 'cause that's how I grew up.

When I had a child, everyone was telling me that I was going to see the world through her eyes, and everything was going to get this nice gloss to it. I kept waiting for that to happen, and thought there was a real problem with me that it wasn't.

Are you woman enough to be my man?

I would thank God, but I don't believe in it.

Music was your real passion, this thing you held dear even above family. It was this relationship that never betrayed you. Once it became your job - this thing that was highly visible, this thing that became about commerce - that's when you were holding onto music like it was a palm tree in a hurricane.

That's part of the curse: If you're gonna play the song, you better play it. I've tried to phone in 'Jeremy' a few times, and it's tough. It doesn't work.