People become who they are. Even Beethoven became Beethoven.

Who would want to break into [the music business]? It's like a bank that's already been robbed.

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.

Asia's crowded and Europe's too old, Africa is far too hot and Canada's too cold. And South America stole our name, let's drop the big one.

Still, it's clear that there are lots of people out there who are uncomfortable [about racism]. The Civil War was a long time ago but there are aspects of it that remain unsettled.

I've written a song for Prince. I never showed it to Prince, but just to see if I could do it. At the time, when I sort of knew him, he was recording a song a day. I wondered if I could do that. So I wrote it.

I'm interested in geography and weather and things like that, and if you don't write love songs, you've gotta go somewhere. I wrote a lot about places because that's what else there was. I had to stop myself from writing more of them.