There's so many parts of your life, you know? People say that you don't get any better after the age of about forty or something like that, as a performer. I find all that to be a misconception. I don't feel bad about the way I present stuff. The calendar and the mirror - they're bastards.

How can you consider flower power outdated? The essence of my lyrics is the desire for peace and harmony. That's all anyone has ever wanted. How could it become outdated?

Lately, I'm spending more and more time working with non-rock musicians and leaving the mainstream - almost dissolving into another world, musically.

Some audiences can shake and bang their heads on the stage to riffs all night long, but subtlety is an art that must be mastered if you're going to be remembered.

No matter what we say, entertainers are usually quite insecure, wobbly characters underneath, and maybe that bit of glory or that bit of expression or whatever it is compensates in some area.

So for a long time I closed my eyes to the possibility of America having a white voice.

I love the feeling of letting fly, of pushing as far as I could go with my voice. The only way you can really graduate how you do it is by doing it regularly to people who don't have to be super impressed. You can do it in the studio all day long but you don't get the flashback that you get onstage.