When I'm making my music, I'm writing it, I'm producing it, I'm playing all the instruments, I'm performing. It's my own world where I do what I feel, and nobody tells me anything.
The way I was raised and the people that I grew up around for the most part were very humble people, and I appreciate all that they taught me, and their energy and their magnanimity help keep me grounded.
A lot of my songs deal with spirituality and God, and I guess if you're in tune with that, you'll read into it.
I just live my life and try to be present. When I'm present in the moment and something comes, I can capture it, because it doesn't come from me, it's out there.
I was taught by my grandfather that anything that your mind can conceive, you can have. It's a reality.
Confusion makes people uncomfortable. They can't put their finger on me.
Things that would shock us years ago are like nothing now.
Where I'm at in life, the women have got to come with something else, not just the body, but the mind and spirit. It usually trips them out, but that's the way it's going to be. I'm looking at the big picture.
My mother gave lots of good advice and had a lot to say. As you get older, you realize everything she said was true.
I don't play the tuba.
We're beginning to play God and get into cloning. We give up quickly. Divorce is an easy option. So why not just create your own mate? Synthesize a human being. You get tired of it, turn it off and put it in the closet like the vacuum cleaner.
If I had to associate myself with one song, it would probably be Let Love Rule. It's so simple and to the point. It speaks for itself.
I don't pull, I just receive.
If you look at the guys in the '70s, like Led Zeppelin, they had bigger planes than we do, they had more money. But they weren't singing about it.
I honestly don't remember how I wrote or did the songs. Or the sessions. They all become very much a blur. And each album is like that. It may be that there are different locations, it may take longer, shorter, or whatever, but it's always something that just happened.
When I stopped trying to write songs, that's when I'm able to begin writing songs. You have to just use your life, and the things around you for your inspiration.
I find cooking to be the one thing that relaxes me. I don't get to do it often . . .
I want to get away, I want to fly away. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Fly Away changed my life. There are certain songs that do. When I won the Grammy, I was in Paris. I sort of forgot about it.
I always try to keep the circumstances in my life fresh. I like to change the physical environment I live in, change the people around me and try to experience things for the first time. I think that keeps one on their toes, creatively and spiritually.
I mean, there are only so many notes. What makes something original is how you put it together.
We've always just gotten up there and played. We don't have any dancers, we don't have all that stuff going on, we just get up there and play.
When I was a kid and I bought a record, I ripped that thing open, I wanted to know who was playing what, what studio it was cut at, who was the string arranger, who was the engineer.
It's like a dream to come to Spain and stay for a couple of years and get somebody to teach me Spanish music.
I have a great time with my band and on the stage we get along well.
