I think there are deep structural things that are wrong in the world. The US is the Western empire of the 19th century regrouping in the 20th, not out of wickedness, but because everybody else in Eurasia was so completely destroyed by the Second World War. Economically, that was quite a useful time for the US, so they ended up in the position of enormous power. And like any great power, they're going to act in their own interests. The problem is due to what the business community wants, which is to make as much money as they can out of what other people do and pay as little as possible for it.

In the past, so many of my records, really, have been sketches for records that never really got made.

The most effective instruments do have a vocal quality.

Anybody who thinks pop music's easy should try to make a pop single and find out that it isn't.

In theory, I'd like to work in a group. But the group I'd like to work in, all the musicians in them are long since dead.

I can't imagine my life without the extraordinary bebop jazz revolution in New York in late '40s and '50s.

There are singers that I have enjoyed, from Nina Simone and Ray Charles onward. But the music that made music the number one thing for me as a youth was jazz.