The high point of my entire junior high school career was going backstage after the first concert to meet the Beatles in person. I had a huge crush on George Harrison at the time, having inherited my family's passion for skinny musicians, and I was simply awestruck to be meeting the Fab Four in person.

My mom was a phoenix who always expected to rise again from the ashes of her latest disaster... She loved being Judy Garland.

In June 1968, five days before my mother's forty -sixth birthday, the world fell apart again. Sirhan Sirhan shot Bobby Kennedy, who died the next day. Why were people shooting all the Kennedys? Had the country gone mad?

Barry Manilow has gone from being the love of my life to being a friend for life.

When I got a call from Los Angeles to do the Tonight Show, I considered it more of an inconvenience than an opportunity.

People come up to me as I leave the stage after a performance and tell me tey saw my mother onstage with me every time I sing. I keep a sense of humor about it.

My mother wasn't rational those last years; if she had been, she would have been horrified by her own behavior.