The Eternal Kansas City song came from a dream sequence. It was actually kind of weird. I had this dream about a Kansas City type of thing while I was up at Stevie Winwood's place near Cheltenham, in Britain. I went into this small town and I was walking along and this dream thing was still in my head.

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.

What excited me when I first came into it was the performing aspect and doing blues-oriented material, rock/blues oriented stuff, basic stuff, basic what they call rock 'n' roll.

There's always got to be a struggle. What else is there? That's what life is made of. I don't know anything else. If there is, tell me about it.

You are who you are. It doesn't make any point to go out and buy the Top 40 albums to see what those acts are doing. There's no point in hearing what's going on. The only thing that's going on is what's been going forever. It's just that some people dig that bag and some people dig the other bag.

There was a conflict - the actual putting together of the reality of the situation didn't seem to gel. I'd been doing kind of a slow ballad type of thing on records, but when it came to performing, I felt I was limiting myself.

Somebody's going to hear a song that will key in a nerve or something in their experience that represents their own vision. And the next person is going to see it completely different. So even what it means to me is probably irrelevant. It's totally irrelevant. What matters is what it means to each person listening to it.