On the whole, I tend not to listen to my peers.

I just saw a recent television program about art, and it was saying how from the end of the Second World War, so much of what our culture is comes from not just the United States in general, but New York in particular. In my case, I can't imagine my life without the extraordinary bebop jazz revolution in New York in late '40s and '50s.

There are a lot of composers who were fantastic, but I challenge them to write a record that you could play five times a day for two months on the radio, songs that people will want to dance to on a Saturday night.

Im not, by nature, a collaborator. My biggest influences were people like painters and poets. These are solitary workers.

People are quite shocked when you remind them that Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra never wrote a song that they recorded in their lives, as far as I know.

I don't want to be a professional cripple. And I don't see the suicide stuff as tragic.

I'm just a very primitive, infantile folk singer.