I'm still basically the same as I always was. I still listen to the same people. That's where I'm coming from.

Then it evolved into more of a ballad style singer/songwriter thing. And there was a conflict in trying to merge the two styles with the same band behind me. 'Cause the musicians that I would need to do ballad-oriented tunes would require musicians who were more into jazz.

I was just getting tired of the image bullshit...that man of mystery trip and what have you. What's that all about?

You learn to read the audiences after a while, and there are all different kinds of gigs.

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.

Any artist is an instrument-and that's exactly why you can't do it all the time. You can only do it when it's happening, when it's coming through. No matter how much you may want to do it, if it's not happening then it's simply not happening.

[Jean-Paul] Sartre was a throwback to the existential period. I'm not really so much into that these days. I went through a period of going over things and looking at them again to see what they were. But I'm into psychiatry type things. I'm into philosophy. I'm into that sort of thing.