I don't want to own her, but I can't let her have it both ways. There is one too many of us.

Every songwriter lives to have at least one song that a cab driver who asks 'You write anything I know?' will recognize.

I didn't want much. I wanted much more. In fact, I wanted everything.

In all my years of performing, no audience member has ever actually assaulted me. I consider this to be the singular triumph of my performing career.

The truth is, I initially became a singer-songwriter while still in my teens because it was the only way to guarantee that somebody on earth would sing the songs I was writing. Since then, I've performed just about everywhere: rock clubs, concerts halls, arenas, TV.

But thankfully, my first album, Wide Screen, was sort of a critics darling - everyone raved about it, but no one bought it. They only manufactured 10,000 copies; I wasnt even in the running for failure!

Kipling said that Success and Failure are both imposters, and we should all listen to Kipling, if only because none of us are likely to know anybody else named Rudyard. But having been bitten in my life by the jaws of both victory and defeat, I must rush to add that success is to failure as butter pecan ice cream is to death.