My music has a high irritation factor. I`ve always tried to say something. Eccentric lyrics about eccentric people. Often it was is joke. But I would plead guilty on the grounds that I prefer eccetricity to the bland.

The belief in the '70s was that music was changing the world. I never believed that it had that great an effect. The effect Madonna had on fashion and sort of mores of young girls was a bigger deal than anything Dylan may have said, even.

The easiest thing I do is assignment songs. They tell me what they need me to write. I can do that fairly quickly. Writing for an orchestra is difficult. Writing songs [on your own] is most difficult of all. Though [writing for] the orchestra is close.

It takes a whole lot of medicine for me to pretend I am somebody else.

The best of my songs are more than just a joke. There's something else going on - a character, or it's not just a plain joke.

I like Public Enemy a great deal.

I've worked with a band, and it's nice to have someone to travel around with, but I didn't like it as well on stage.