Style to me is incidental. The British are very adept at creating it for its own sake, but the best style is incidental. John Coltrane had a style but it was totally incidental to what he was.

I don't want any production credit. I think producers are overrated. They're for people who, first of all, don't know anything about music or arranging and have no ear for their own doings. They can't tell a good solo from a bad solo, stuff like that.

Practice? I never practice. I just write songs and take solos.

I wonder what all those Chinese poets sound like in Chinese. I like their distilled quality.

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 grew up taking piano lessons and liking Wagner when I was in second grade.

I always like junkyards. All this metal piled up - they're filled with pathos, those places. Much more pathos than most of the music I've heard. You look at it, and there's more feeling, even though it's depressing, than there is in a lot of music I hear these days. A junkyard is what it is, whereas listening to a record by, say, Styx, is something else.