I was just like a 21st century person waiting to be born, and this is the medium that I thrive in. And I feel stronger now than I did any time since I’ve been a teenager – I mean, musically, creatively.
I grew up in a very racially integrated place called Pottstown. It was an agricultural / industrial town which has since become a suburb of Philadelphia. I grew up basically in a black neighborhood.
The difference between me and other people in my generation is instead of saying the Internet’s killing the record business, I say, ‘Who cares about the record business, the Internet is enhancing music.
I definitely dislike pomposity and artifice. I hope that I’m not that. Once I write a song, it belongs to the world, and the way people perceive it, it’s cool.
I returned to upstate NY where I just laid in bed for days with a fever that just wouldn’t go away. After more of this, I grew increasingly sure that this was not simply the flu!
I wanted to show the world, and myself too, what I can do. I came up in the world of Philadelphia soul, but I’m fluent in a lot of languages musically and I like working with different people from different generations.
I was a pioneer in MTV and I was there from the very beginning. So I saw how that developed and how loose it was and how much fun it was in its looseness. And I was influenced a lot by that.
I’m in the trenches; I do the best work I can always do. Having said that, the way that what I do converges with the outside world is fascinating to me. Because it ebbs and flows. People’s interest and understanding, it changes all the time.
When you have that first flash of what you think is going to be a great idea-from the mouth, from the hands-that’s an amazing feeling. I don’t think anything’s quite as good as that.
Around 1974, I graduated into the occult, and spent a sold six or seven years immersed in the Kabala and the Chaldean, Celtic, and Druidic traditions I also became fascinated with Aleister Crowley, the nineteenth-century magician who shared these beliefs.
I was very inspired by my mother. She was a vocal teacher and sang in a band, and my first memories of her were going out with her on the local circuit.
Everybody who I ever cared about has told me that they like my music: Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Al Green, The Spinners, Smokey Robinson. Everybody that matters.
