Places like Belgium and the south of France, Sweden and Copenhagen are really alive. They really love rock 'n' roll, they really respond.

The song Venus de Milo, the whole subject of it is Love is a drug.

Yeah, I'd say there's probably about a couple of hundred people I admire - but that has nothing to do with what a person does themselves. That's why I never mention these things. You can read a detective novel you really like, but it had no bearing on what you do yourself, you just think, "God, how this guy wove this together!" Or you get into the energy of it. Or you see a poem which makes a great statement about sentiment, but it's not sentimental.

With my records, it's just a matter of trying to create something fresh for myself in a very finite context, which is the pop song. I don't know anything about the people who buy my records, and what, if anything, they get out of them.

When somebody turned me on to a Coltrane record around seventh grade, I took up saxophone.

The Beat thing happened when I was younger. I used to run away from home, inspired by the Beats, like in '64 and '65.

I just don't like people coming up to me and saying something. It immediately makes you become insincere. There is no way you can react to it sincerely.