I used to carry a bag of records down to my friend's house every Friday, and we'd sit down and play all the records I loved, and we'd look at the album covers.
Fame came quickly. I was only 19 when I secured my initial recording contract and my first two hit records - 'Are 'Friends' Electric?' and 'Cars' - were number ones.
The CD, it should be noted, was born out of greed. It was devised to prop up record sales on the expectation of people replenishing their record collections with CDs of albums they had already purchased.
I really don't think records should be made in the manner where you sit and write, and when you're finished writing, you start recording. That just seems conventional and old-fashioned to me.
Once I started looking for a record deal, I had a trainer. And the trainer told me that I would never sell a record if I didn't lose weight.
So, when I got the contract for my album, even though it was an English record, my manager insisted on making sure we would record in Spanish as well, and it worked out really well for me.
The opportunity to record the song came when Phil Collins' record label, Atlantic, was doing a tribute album to him and they asked all these different artists to do renditions of his songs.
Sometimes I'd hear things on other people's records and I say I wanted it on my records, but Leslie Kong said, no, it wasn't right and that it wasn't my style.
If I never sang on a record again I can still look at my walls. They are covered floor to ceiling with gold and platinum records from all over the world.
In the late '70s, I had a band - the David Johansen band, for lack of a better name - and I started collecting, not records, but tapes from people I knew who had jump-blues records.
If you put all the songs together that I've written on band records, and put it up next to my solo record, there's definitely a different kind of feel than Billy's songs.
T Bone and I grew up together in Fort Worth, Texas. He had his own recording studio by the time he was seventeen years old. When we were both nineteen he made the first archival recording of my voice.
We never sit down before we start making a record and talk about this new sonic palette that we are going to try to explore. We always let the record kind of reveal itself to us over time.
It became a question of do I want to be on a label where it could take three years to put out a record instead of putting out three records over the same period of time on my own.
While I used to make my living principally as a record producer, as time went on, I had to depend more and more on my live performances because of the evolution of the record industry, which has de-emphasized what made it possible to make a living.
When I was recording music, I'd record all the parts myself, and I wouldn't let other people in; that's essentially what Blood Orange is the result of; me trying to find the most comfortable I can be with everything.
When we were making vinyl records we had a lot of time limitations for each record so songs were left off for a number of reasons. Now, with CDs, much more music can be included.
I'm not performing now. What I do now is listen to music all day long. Listening is very nourishing to me. I might go back to perform, I might make another record. I've got a record half finished.
Elvis deserves a lot of credit for bringing the blues to middle America, not the Vegas stuff. The early stuff, The Sun records, and the first few RCA records. He was wonderful, he had the power, the drive, and he was so dedicated to his music.
I had Madonna parties; I dressed like Madonna, and I had all of her records because we had records back then. I knew all of her lyrics; I was obsessed with her movies and the whole thing.
Actually freestyle really comes from 'Planet Rock'. If you listen to all the freestyle records you'll hear that they are based on 'Planet Rock'. All the Miami Bass records are based upon Planet Rock.
