Catch Harry Belafonte. He's got a helluva rhythm section.And so have the Pointer Sisters. And that little guy with Sammy Clayton. He plays the whole show with 40 members.

The music has gotten thick. Guys give me tunes and they're full of chords. I can't play them...I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords, and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them.

I don't like to hear someone put down dixieland. Those people who say there's no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don't know.

I put all those synthesizer sounds behind "Decoy" and "Code M.D." A lot of things we write together. A lot of things are his, but they don't have that thing I want on the bottom. I often tell him, I say, "Bobby [Irving], if there's a melody, there's another one somewhere that goes with it."

That was my gift . . . having the ability to put certain guys together that would create a chemistry and then letting them go; letting them play what they knew, and above it.

Always look ahead, but never look back.

My ego only needs a good rhythm section