No, I've never truly been a minister.

Rock 'n' roll offered me a platform to speak what I felt. It also offered me a platform to support my mama and my brothers and sisters - twelve children.

I think God made a woman to be strong and not to be trampled under the feet of men. I've always felt this way because my mother was a very strong woman, without a husband.

I was washing dishes at the Greyhound bus station at the time and I said, 'Awap bop a lup bop a wop bam boom, take 'em out!'

I always knew I was a man, always felt that I was a man, always wanted to be a man.

That's what Tina Turner did, too - sang blues up-tempo - and they called it rock 'n' roll.

I am the architect of rock n' roll. I have to be a fan of all its forms.