If you write great songs with meaning and emotion, they will last for ever because songs are the key to everything.

In the '50s you weren't taught about sex whatsoever. It was never just talked about. People used to snoop behind their curtains and look at the neighbors. And if a girl became pregnant in your part of the world, she was shipped off to the countryside.

When we started, I was delivering meals to people in Atlanta. We were a direct-care organization. And it was - people needed meals, they needed transport, they needed medication, they needed buddy systems. They had a death sentence. There was AZT, and that was just prolonging the agony, basically. Now people, of course, if they are on antiretrovirals, they face a lifetime of health, basically. I mean, it doesn't - it's I would say in the 99 percent certainty bracket that if you are on that medication, you will have a healthy life.

I'm glad I've given up drugs and alcohol. It would be awful to be like Keith Richards. He's pathetic. It's like a monkey with arthritis, trying to go onstage and look young.

I became successful and within five years conquered the world and had the most amazing run. I had so much momentum and adrenaline going, but then it ends and you have to find what level you're going to be on, how enthusiastic you're going to be.

I'm very relaxed. I have a family, I have a partner of 20 years, I have a wonderful life; nothing could be better.

From the start, I've always admired Eminem's thinking. That's the reason I wanted to appear on the Grammys with him when I was asked. Eminem has the balls to say what he feels and to make offensive things funny. That's very necessary today in America, with people being muzzled and irony becoming a lost art. Artists like Eminem who use their free speech to get a point across are vitally important. There just aren't many people in the world with balls that big and talent that awesome.