I was feeling that I was the in the dead-end circuit from 1980 to 1983, and I didn't know what else to do. I remember doing a show in some college town, in a tiny club, and afterward some fans came back. I thought I had done good gig and they were going to tell me that.

I never say never about anything.

I feel a great comfort and relief knowing that there are others who lived and died and thought and fought so long ago; I feel less tyrannized by the present day.

I thought that if I practiced doing melodies for a year or so at home, I would learn to think melodically, and when I went to work it would come out, and it did, on this album. What else was important to me...? I spend a lot of time in the grocery store, shopping.

As society has changed, what had formerly been unacceptable has become colorful.

And if somebody's going to produce me, they should be producing my sound for me. And that's something I have to come up with myself.

I've probably been spit on more that any person alive outside of, I would say, a member of the prison system.