I was a happy kid up until I hit the teen years.

I don't know any musician, successful or otherwise, that got in it to make money. Or writer, for that matter. You get into it because you love it.

The only good grades I ever got in school before I was kicked out were for creative writing. I thought that fiction might be in my future but then my career took a different path once the Beatles showed me what a blast being in a band could be. Writing my memoir Late, Late at Night reminded me how much I love the craft. So I decided to give fiction a shot again.Magnificent Vibration is the result. I’m still not quite sure where it came from, but once I got going, it practically wrote itself. I’ve heard writers I admire speak of that phenomenon, so maybe I’m on the right track.

They were marketing me as a teen idol, when the stuff on the record was not what teen idols were doing at the time.

I don't think anyone ever feels acknowledged enough.

I do have a lot of deep religious iconography. I have crosses all over my house, and there's something very attractive about seeing nuns walking down the street. It's not a sexual thing for me; I know it is for some guys.

As I've gotten older, I realize how important my fans are and that I'm here because of them and not the other way around.