I think that too many people think too much about my lyrics. I am more a person who works with the sound of a word than with its meaning. Often I just choose the words because of the rhythm not because of the meaning.

I got one entire song from fortune cookies (Land of Sunshine). On another one, I took words from different Frank Sinatra songs and pasted them together. Another one, I was just driving around and there was a piece of paper on the ground, so I stole it.

I guess I'm getting to the age where a lot of other people my age have real jobs, and when they're hard-up they refer to an old-timer like me.

I learned what I could do with my voice on stages and because of the people that I was around. It wasn't me sitting in a room by myself. I didn't know what I was doing. I was figuring it out on the fly.

The studio is my main compositional tool. And I used to be horrible in the studio. I didn't know any kind of technical stuff. But when you have something in your head, you've gotta figure out a way of executing it.

I am no one to be a purist.

Any idiot, any stockbroker can get out there and live out a fantasy and pretend like he's playing music. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.