Acid wasn't getting a whole lot of bad press at the time, and as I saw the whole bad-press thing happen, I became aware that the government had done a whole lie on all the other benign drugs as well. It became clear to me that the government wanted no real drug education.

I wanted to have a normal childhood. Normal relationships.

Then l learned to play guitar and l started writing songs and my mother formed for me a publishing business, so we started publishing and managing artists.

Marijuana. Boy, I thought that was just terrible. How could this great man do this to his life?

There's a big difference between somebody who does acid on weekends and somebody who takes downers every day.

There was this little shaggy dog on it, and Frank Weatherwax was working the dog. One day we were all sitting around, and Frank said, listen, my brother Rudd just got the rights back from MGM for Lassie, and said have your agent check into it. I did, and I went for a screen test.

It was the worst period of my life. I had all this gigantic acceptance as a kid, and all of a sudden there was this monumental rejection.