As a West Side kid fooling around with boxing gloves, I had been, for some reason of temperament, more interested in dodging a blow than in striking one.
I've never been the kind of person who would get up and wave my arms and scream and shout and say, 'Hey, listen to this, listen to this.'
I've got some real diehards down in New Zealand; I look after them and make sure they always get tickets.
I have heard something said about allegiance to the South. I know no South, no North, no East, no West, to which I owe any allegiance.
When I was four, we moved to the house on the west side of Chicago where I grew up. My earliest memories are of that first summer.
Our fans want us to be happy and if that means being married or having a girlfriend, they are okay with that. Of course, in this industry it is a bit harder to have normal relationships, but it is possible.
I'm the complete opposite of every clean cut, decent-looking guy you could ever think of. Yet, I have the biggest heart in the world.
My daughter is wonderful and incredibly well behaved. I am very lucky. She will always be my priority.
I am very proud of the critical role West Virginians play in providing energy to our nation.
A lot of Woody Guthrie's songs were taken from other songs. He would rework the melody and lyrics, and all of a sudden it was a Woody Guthrie song.
Bob Dylan's first couple of records in the 60's weren't considered cover records, but he only wrote one or two original songs on each album.
I think it's ridiculous to try to sell records to teenagers, because teenagers don't buy my records. And there ain't that many teenagers out there in the marketplace.
If fans are going to turn on me because of this, they weren't my fans anyway. I couldn't betray a whole 25 years of record making and not do this. I had to.
What is there to be afraid of? The worst thing that can happen is you fail. So what? I failed at a lot of things. My first record was horrible.
I've been on plenty of things that never took off, and I've been on one thing, 'The West Wing,' that was a big hit, but took off well before I was on it.
I married a woman who's not going to take anything. No slips. She's very accountable, and she holds me very accountable.
If one artist sells five million albums, the tendency is for other artists to say, 'Maybe I should do a little of that, too.' That can be tough to resist.
You know, I'd like to sit here and blame everybody else for my trouble. I just can't do that. I can't find it in myself to do it.
But these days, I get a lot more attention and airplay from the Adult Contemporary and country radio stations, and I feel comfortable saying I'm a part of that.
Anytime you put your name on a ticket with nothing else attached to it, that's the true testament to where you are in your career - how many tickets are sold.
Danny and I wrote 10 songs in seven days, which I thought might be close to the record until you probably look at some of the Beatles statistics.
