What was happening with me, with the album [A Period of Transition], with the people who took the pictures, the record company, everything, getting a new manager [Harvey Goldsmith]-it was all saying a period of transition to me so that was the title choice. It says what it is and obviously nobody is going to analyze that. It's exactly what it is.

Whether you're writing a book or a song or whatever, you've got to be involved in it. It's got to come from the heart I think...that's what it's all about.

I realized that what I was looking for was doing collaborations with other people - people who can play a ballad, rock, jazz. I was looking for more co-op type things than what I had been doing, which had been completely my own trip.

Performing was the natural thing originally and the rest of it [records and so on] is just like offshoots of that. That's how I see it anyway.

When I first started drinking, everybody was doing it. That was before they discovered marijuana and all that. It was the late 50s, early 60s - it was the beginnings of the rock 'n' roll era. The main drink was like wine. And even that was a romantic throwback to something.

Common one, my illuminated one, oh my high in the art of suffering. Take a walk with me.

I felt kind of bored at the prospect of writing some more of my own songs because I really wasn't saying what I wanted to say.