With 'Blue Slide Park' I wanted to have a number one album, and I did do it, so I'm not mad at it, but that was its goal.
When I was doing mainstream country, there was no way that an executive was going to ask you to do a gospel album.
I think somewhere in the back of my mind I've always wanted to make a whole swing album.
As opposed to touring for three years and then going into the studio and writing an album, I think this record is representative of a lot of everyday people.
The whole experience of getting an album from an artist you like and listening to it from beginning to end is sort of gone. Now it's piecemeal.
I'm not a slave to the recording industry. I have the freedom to make an album that I want to make and do it the way I want.
I'm very driven, and I always have been. So I'd like to release a successful album, continue in musical theatre, and be more involved in business.
I never thought of having platinum albums and winning awards. I just wanted to write songs and sing when I started out in the music business.
We had a huge audience, we sold truckloads of albums. If we do something that's cool, people will listen to it. If we don't, we would be selling people short.
The Sicilian Defense album was never released and never will be if I have anything to do with it. I have not heard it since it was finished. I hope the tapes no longer exist.
If I have a hit, then I hope the people who like the hit song go out and buy my album so they can hear it all.
Stevie Wonder's 'Songs in the Key of Life' was on constant shuffle throughout my childhood. I remember my dad playing some stellar Max Roach albums as well.
Between the record companies being the way they are and the fact that people can just download one song instead of buying a whole album, it's hard to make a good living nowadays.
Any time that you can give the consumer more of what they want, it's a good thing. I said from Day 1 that the unbundling of the album is a good thing.
In the '80s, I was putting out an album virtually every year, I think mostly based on fear - that if I didn't, people would soon forget about me.
You can't just sit around and make protest albums all your life; eventually it comes to the point where you have to do something.
I don't want to have that thing where I make an album and then I'm super-constantly present in everyone's life for three years, and then gone for the next three.
What started it all was the Kanye album, 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.' We started listening to that and just fell in love with it, fell in love with his production style.
When I tour with the new album, I still do the classics, and I love the atmosphere it creates with the whole audience singing along.
I wouldn't think a blues album would be that commercially successful, but I don't really care. I'd do it for the love of blues, not for the money. I've got plenty of money.
I grew up listening to everything. I have such a love for music, but I don't want to make the same album over and over again.
