Maybe I won't have as much energy. And maybe the highs in my voice won't be what they used to be. But exercise is helping me pace myself.
I've got these five-pound weights and a treadmill in the living room. I work out the other parts that have affected my voice: my diaphragm - doctors took mine out in surgery - and my lungs. I've got to build back my legs, too, so I can run across that stage. I've got a lot to do, but I'm going to get out, sing songs and tell the stories.
My friend Megan Holken is a nutritionist. I have spent some time at her home upstate in Sharon Springs, where she told me how to eat right and cook right.
As for me, I rarely write a song. But when I do write a song, like "Ain't No Chimneys in the Projects," which came to me at three a.m. one morning, on a whim - I get a percentage.
[I've worked as a guard at Rikers Island] from 1988 to 1990.
I remember my sister and I - my big sister would get up on her chair in the kitchen and sing Mary Wells' "What's Easy for Two Is So Hard for One." It was 1966, and I was 10 years old.
Record designers marvel on that stuff. They go back and look at old covers, then make new ones.
I'm blessed to be in an environment where people are sincere.
When I'm on tour, I don't see these spots as much as I'd like. I'm just in, I perform, then I'm out. I hope to spend years sightseeing, then more years after that.
Youth. The fact that, in the mid-'90s, guys like Lee Fields gave me and all these young people the chance to do backup. I was in my 30s, but some of those guys were still teenagers. Others were 22 and 23 - babies, all of them.
I really can't wait to dance with Ellen DeGeneres!
I'm not planning on singing too late. Maybe another eight or 10 years is enough before I retire. It would also be great to revisit all these stunning places around the world where I have toured.
I'm going to dress a little different. Those frilly dresses I used to wear on stage, that was the old me.
I'm grateful to be alive, because I really did not think I was going to be alive, onstage performing songs.
You know a man can play the part of a saint just so long for a day comes when his true, his true self unfolds.
I never took any kind of vocal lessons or teachings of how to - I never even took piano lessons. And a voice just came to me and said, go play the piano in the church.
Not only do I say, get up and get out, I tell the cancer to get up and get out. And if you don't get up and get out, I'm going to shout you out. And I get to shout.
I'm coming back to give the people what they want.
Everything I've done and everything I've gained in my life has been with my music.
When I got sick this past summer, I couldn't - my mind just wasn't on music. The rest of the band understood. But once October came, I felt ready to get back again.
I know for one thing that alcohol will have no more part in my life.
My goal for these next few years, for the next forever, is to try and keep positive things around me. If somebody is coming at me with negative stuff, just back away from me.
I've got to find local farmers and get natural foods.
I can't eat processed food.
As for meat, I'm not going to become vegetarian. I'm telling you that right now. I want me a steak. I want me a pork chop. I want me a lamb chop, even a piece of duck every once in awhile. We used to have ham and salami, all that crazy stuff.
