Well, as I was saying... everyone's so nice to me, usually.

I do work a lot. I mean, most of my income, I would say, comes from live performances. And then you've got publishing, you've got record royalties.

My old man is drunker than a barrel full of monkeys, but my old lady she don't care.

When your persona begins to take over your music and becomes more important, you enter a dangerous place. Once you have people around you who don't question you, you're in a dangerous place.

It took a child. It took a child with a blood transfusion not only to wake me up, but to wake America up, basically. I mean, I read about his plight in a doctor's office in New York in a magazine. I was so outraged about it that I contacted the family. We became friends. I helped them move to another place in Indiana. And we became constant friends.

I'm enjoying everything in my life, but I think the element of surprise in show business is what makes us really love it, because one day you're sitting by the phone waiting to do something or not doing anything, and the next day you've got the chance of a lifetime. Those little phone calls don't come up so often, but when they come up, it's fantastic.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life talking about when I used to drink or when I used to take drugs. I'm more interested in the future.