I'm making black music. That's the only outline for me, really. That's the only boundary to stay with. It's soul music. I'm going all out in those terms.
Definitely. The way I look is a reflection of who I am. That's how my music is too.
I don't know how I want to come across looking, really. I just look how I am.
I'm closest to the music when I'm onstage with the band, playing.
Since I started playing, really, since I was like three. I imagined myself famous but the vision was blurry, I guess. What you see on TV isn't a realistic picture.
Watch us, all stand in line, for a slice of the devil's pie. Who am I to justify, all the evil in our eye. Been through hell. All them fools whose souls' for sale. Demons screaming in my ear. Your soul's me, your soul's somethin' that I, feel inside. If I run, Lord only knows how far. You're part of my identity. I sometimes have the tendency to look at you religiously.
Prince is extremely soulful, but he can get real rock-'n'-rollish. So can Lenny Kravitz. Lenny's real soulful but he's got that rock with him, too. On the whole, I guess black folks ain't trying to handle rock-'n'-roll, really.
The show is coming from the music. I get on the stage with the band, and I communicate with my musicians, and the music that we create and all that is coming out of us. The music is making the show and the music is creating the atmosphere, so if you close your eyes and listen and feel what it is that's coming out of the speakers, that's the whole point.
It's not too hard to play Fender Rhodes keyboard if you get the right one, with some good action on the keys. If you got an old one that ain't been touched up, it could be kind of difficult to get real loose on it.
I don't know what scared me about Marvin Gaye. I just know that he was scary, and that all of his... his aura was frightening to me. I can't explain why.
Like I say, it depends on how you do rock-'n'-roll. If you do it right then I think people will appreciate it for what it is.
I lived in the house with my mother so she had no choice but to hear what I was doing. I would ask her for her opinion. I used to like doing that because I would let my friends hear what I did, but they listened to it on another level. My mom listened to it with a different ear, because she's older.
I haven't had the time to do a lot of writing. But nothing's really changed about me. It's just my day-to-day activities have changed, and as a person, I have to adapt to those changes.
In Europe they're more calm, more reserved. Here, in the States, people are more wild, a little more open. I guess it takes a lot to impress those people up there in Europe. Especially in London.
Especially when I first came up here to New York, everybody wanted to hook me up with this guy who's Prince's sound engineer. Almost everybody wanted me to hook up with him and go to L.A. and do all that just because that's the route Prince took. And for a while I was listening to all of that. "Yeah, if it's good enough for Prince, it should be good enough for me." But I mean, that's not the case, really. Prince is a different person than I am. You just got to find the right person for you, whoever you click with.
