I was always into the music. Music, in general, saved my life. But the fame part… I would look up, see what was going on around me, the reporters and photographers and all, and then I would just go back to making my music.
I am nervous that the craft of songwriting is taking a nose dive…And since I’m a songwriter and I connect with an interpretative, you know, interpretation of a song, I miss it. I just miss it.
I keep reading about people who want to be famous – it’s not that they want to be great songwriters or great actors, they want to be celebrities. That is scary because you can be famous doing some really stupid things.
Fame is always a shock to the system; there’s no school to go to, there are no books to read, and when it hits you, it’s a surprise. You could be working for 10, 20 years and when it finally hits you, you get knocked down.
Every few years, I go back into all the songs and I update them so that it never sounds like an oldies show. If you come to the shows, they’re full of muscle. ‘Copacabana’ sounds like it could have been released yesterday.
These days, with ‘American Idol’ and all the other reality shows, young people become famous overnight, and that can be very difficult to handle, the way photographers follow you around and study your every move.
