It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most. Singers, like Frank Sinatra and myself, we interpret the songs that we like. Not unlike a Shakespearean actor that goes back to the greatest wor...
I do music because I can just pick up my guitar and sing, and completely satisfy, instant gratification. I don't need a script, I don't people, I don't need anything, cameras, I just have myself and my guitar, or keyboard.
I like being a storyteller. I'm bored with myself; I like to write about others. I have a lot of names in my songs: Karen, Margaret, Mary Kay. Even if it's about me, I want to put it through someone else. The music is the soundtrack to the story.
I have to admit I've found myself doing the same things that a lot of other rock stars do or are forced to do. Which is not being able to respond to mail, not being able to keep up on current music, and I'm pretty much locked away a lot. The outside ...
I like both music and acting, and they both have a lot in common - timing, immediacy, stuff like that. But acting is more regimented. You wait around for hours, you don't get to write the script, you get hired. Music represents me better. I'm not act...
In my mid 30's, after a decade or so of giving full time to the music thing and finding myself with about $10 in the bank and no assets other than my musical equipment, I realized I needed to get serious about making a living.
I find myself wanting to make music at the dining room table or in the bedroom - I'm kind of a mobile writer, so I sort of move around the house. But the attic is definitely where I can make the most noise. While everyone on the lower floors screams ...
I wanted to be a cheerleader, like my sister was - all the most popular and beautiful girls are cheerleaders and I wanted that, and it demolished this vision of myself. That's when I found the piano, when music saved me; that's when I first attempted...
I have always been infatuated with country music. Country music tells stories, and I've always loved to tell stories. I said that when I establish myself as an artist that can do pretty much anything I want to do in music, I'm going to make a country...
Ah, 'Pather Panchali' was the most inspiring film that I wrote music for, and it was so spontaneously done. I saw the film, composed on the spot, along with myself and only four other musicians, and everything was done within 4-1/2 hours, I think an ...
In a sense, I'm always hearing music of some sort, whether it's people talking or surface noise or whatever, because there is no privacy. So when I'm by myself, I just kind of like to be and reflect, and I can't do that when I'm listening to music. B...
Well, I've been recording myself on a computer since I was about 13 or 14. So it's completely entwined with my creative process. Essentially, it allows you to make music that's better and smarter than you are, by using your ears to lead the way.
Sometimes I have wrinkles, in the morning. It depends on what kind of night that I had. I accept myself and the way that I am growing older. I have eye bags and some people have proposed to me to take them out but I said no.
I had this temp receptionist job in New York, and I kind of hated it, and in the morning I would come out of the subway and just walk along the New York streets with all these people around me and kind of sing to myself. Like, 'She's gonna make it!'
Generally, when I wake up in the morning I set out a series of problems for myself and I write them down, and when I'm sleeping, my mind solves the problems. When I wake up in the morning, I have more clarity on the issue.
You're watching your kids playing football, and you're not present. It's like the worst... it's horrible. I despise myself for it. I think it's a particularly male thing. Being present and in the moment with your kids is something a lot of men strugg...
So I still seized the power, but I felt that if I officially made myself the boss, in black and white, it would be too intimidating for the other producers and the other men who worked on the show. In other words, I had the power, but I gave them the...
When I was a kid, I wanted a Chanel bob and bangs. My mom said no. I went to the salon anyway, and they said, 'No way - we are not going to do that to your hair.' So I did it myself. Big mistake. Instead of my bangs going down straight, they were sti...
I was living as a young single mom. I was 19 when I was divorced, and my daughter was a year old, and I waited tables here three to four nights a week for several years while I was trying to support myself and my daughter and the day I got that accep...
My grandmother and I would go see movies, and we'd come back to the apartment - we had a one-room apartment in Hollywood - and I would kind of lock myself in this little dressing room area with a cracked mirror on the door and act out what I had just...
I was a huge fan of comedy and movies and TV growing up, and I was able to memorize and mimic a lot of things, not realizing that that meant I probably wanted to be an actor. I just really, really amused myself and my friends with memorizing entire G...
