If the spirit comes through in a Madame George type of song, that's what the spirit says. You have very little to do with it. You're like an instrument for what's coming through.

You take stuff from different places, and sometimes you stick a line in because it rhymes, not because it makes sense.

I'd found that what I wrote and put out on records somehow was not fitting into how I perform on stage.

[Jazz musicians] couldn't cut rock. I had to be more limited and specific about what I was doing.

Joyous Sound evolved from a gospel influence. Actually it evolved out of sitting at a piano and just picking out a riff, a gospel type riff. It just seemed to come joyously-something about the song, about living in another place of joyous sounds. I'm not quite sure-that's one I'm trying to analyze. It just came out.

Being famous was extremely disappointing for me. When I became famous it was a complete drag and it is still a complete drag.

I was like one of those newspapers, those periodicals. There's all different kinds of alcoholics. There's the everyday kind: that's the consistent one. That's what people think an alcoholic is-but an alcoholic is basically just someone who's allergic to alcohol. That's all it means. It's just an allergy.