There are people that very strongly identify themselves as gay and then lesbian, and then I think there are a lot of people who are kind of some percentage or some version of that.

[Columbia House] magazines were how I found out about the punk world going on in New York. Because of what I read, at the age of 15, I hounded the local record store to order a copy of Horses [1975] for me by Patti Smith.

Once I reached my 40s, I thought to myself that if I'm going to play live now, I need to really mean this. I can't go out and be a little bit, for one moment slovenly in my choices as a performer. I mean, these people have paid a lot of money to be here, they've been through the nightmare of getting here, starving themselves waiting for us to get on stage, so I'm going to give them what they came here for.

I think my apocalyptic feelings went deeper than [heavily influenced by Reagan and AIDS]. I'm really at peace with how afraid I am.

Frankly I'm not great with heroin addicts. I tried heroin, but it was by accident. I'm not great with that level of substance abuse.

Peter was sick of being a pop star, the guitar god, and so he decided to teach himself other instruments. Among the instruments that he picked up was the mandolin.

I had to get a driver's license and drive to St. Louis to find the punk-rock scene that was happening there. And there was a punk-rock scene. It was sweet. It was real. It was like everywhere else in the county. It was a handful of people who were feeling the same pull, and, of course, it was like the Island of Misfit Toys in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer [1964]. Just the freaks, the fags, the fat girls, the unbelievable eccentrics .