My mother was an elementary school teacher for 35 years and taught at the Nixon School in New Jersey. I was raised as a very liberal Democrat, and she was protesting Nixon when he was in office.
I took Spanish in high school and I didn't do too well in it. My Spanish teacher told me not to go on with Spanish anymore, so I was discouraged a little bit.
If I was going to play offense, I'd love to play running back. In high school I played quarterback and wide receiver, but I wouldn't mind running over some folks.
I was a schooled musician. When I made 'Blue Velvet', I told everyone what to do. I was an arranger. I learned music in school I told the band to play this. I told the guitar to do that.
It wasn't until my last year of college, 1976, that I decided well, maybe he's right. Delbert had been pushing me since high school to put 100% into my music.
I've been performing since I was in high school, so I've seen people react to my music and my playing. I'm always appreciative when people like the music, but I'm not shocked.
I studied voice when I was at school, and I was in the chamber choir, and I studied music theory as well, so I guess a lot of it came from being taught at school.
I grew up in Synagogue in the boys' choir. We didn't listen to music in the house; only at temple. Then I went to a mostly African American high school on the South Side of Chicago and joined a gospel choir.
For me, my number one priority always has to be the music, and I'm going to work school around my music - not music around my school.
The majority of the high schools and the public schools in N.Y.C. don't even have band programs. Hip-hop in a lot of ways is an outgrowth of a lack of instruments and a desire to play music, so we can't really fault the kids for that.
Now a cholera epidemic was sweeping through Southeast Asia and south Asia in the early 1970s, so I started medical school and I joined a laboratory to work on this.
I set up a laboratory in the Department of Physiology in the Medical School in South Africa and begin to try to find a bacteriophage system which we might use to solve the genetic code.
I always dressed as a man when I was at school. I loved wearing a tie and a shirt, and I was always wearing suits. Annie Lennox was my hero. I was always playing men in high school.
I promised my mom that if, after a year of putting 150 percent into my career it didn't work out, I would go back to school. I never did go back.
I was very driven in high school. I worked a bunch of odd jobs. I never partied. I never drank. I was just a theater geek who was obsessed with movies.
I was obsessed with romance. When I was in high school, I saw 'Doctor Zhivago' every day from the day it opened until the day it left the theater.
I graduated high school and I didn't have a skill set and I didn't want to go to college. I needed a job.
The most influential thing was the two Chris Rock specials that came out when I was in high school. I was obsessed with that stuff.
I'm 53. I don't care about high school students. I find them irritating and uninformed.
One of the things I learned in law school is that there's nothing wrong or undesirable or dishonorable or destructive about amending the Constitution.
I'm so fortunate in that I've never had another job to pay a bill but acting, since the day I got out of high school.
