I smoked this joint and then it hit me. I thought, what you gotta do is play your own simply blues.

And for so long, I had thought if I was going to write a song, or get "into" something, I had to at least smoke a joint or something. And that didn't work anymore. Once I was fairly well cleaned out, even a little bit of a drug getting into my work threw me off kilter.

I'm not the kind of person who could join AA or have rules for myself or on Thursday take this vitamin pill. So, basically, I learned the hard way. I learned by trial and error, and tried to get drugs out of my work. That took about a year. If I was going to work, it was best that I be straight. And I was surprised at what came out.

I wanted to learn a little bit about acting, not because I thought I'd find a star vehicle and set the world on fire, but I thought the discipline of it would be good for me. I met a good coach, and I joined her class - with a lot of hungry young actors who really didn't acre if I was a rock 'n' roll singer or not. I started to learn to get a focus, without having to jump up and down every few seconds.

In the morning I'd write these essays, anything that I'd feel like writing, and in the afternoon, I'd spend time with my guitar. I had decided after listening to my last four or five albums that my biggest weakness musically was melody. the reason I had been singing in a monotone over the chord patterns in my songs was that I never practiced doing melodies.

There are no pimps, no whores, no transvestites - gone. Now that's more the culture I'm comfortable in ... I don't like it in the house, you know what I mean, but I like it somewhere around.

Nobody understands me, I'm really sensitive.