I enjoy doing different kinds of things. I just enjoy being not tied too much. I feel that I’m tied to myself as a kind of traditional musician and a singer, and the history that I have ties me down.
When you write songs, you have to like them yourself first, but then you have to make everyone else like them, because you can force them to play it, but you can’t force them to like it.
I see songwriting as having to do with experience, and the more you’ve experienced, the better it is. But it has to be tempered, and you just must let your imagination run.
The grown-up world was a very ordered society in the early ’60s, and I was coming out of it. America was even more ordered than anywhere else. I found it was a very restrictive society in thought and behavior and dress.
People have this obsession. They want you to be like you were in 1969. They want you to, because otherwise their youth goes with you. It’s very selfish, but it’s understandable.
I remember when I was very young, I read an article by Fats Domino which has really influenced me. He said, ‘You should never sing the lyrics out very clearly.
