My lifelong friend and mentor Frank Barsalona is gone. And the music business as we knew it went with him.

There is an established tradition of actors directing films that have a particular, personal meaning for them - Warren Beatty, Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner, and most recently George Clooney to name a few. Remarkably, their films share an unusually high percentage of being very good.

The quality of our lives is diminished every time we lose a great artist. It's a different world without Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Curtis Mayfield, Brian Jones and the rest.

The first rule of rock and roll is it's all about live. Then you have to learn a second craft, which is making records. It should go in that order.

Let the wealthier countries and corporations of the world fund an Emergency Organization.

From the age of 14, 13, I guess I wanted to be a rock 'n' roll star. And that was it. I wanted to make a living playing rock 'n' roll, and it was a ridiculously impossible dream at that time. But it was kind of all I ever wanted to do. It's nice to do it.

My lifelong friend and mentor Frank Barsalona is gone. And the music business as we knew it went with him.