George Klein says that Elvis had five real friends outside of his circle, and I was blessed to be one of them. I spent a lot of time with Elvis in Vegas and at Graceland.
Something is better than nothing. Doin' anything for a man, there's investments involved, there's time and production. It's better to give him ten bucks and get a record out than to never record the cat.
I conquered my stage fright a long time ago. In my line of work, it's kind of a pre-requisite that you not feel bad about looking stupid in front of a lot of people.
So whenever I had some in-between producing time down in my studio I popped a tape in and started working on it. Working a little bit at a time, it actually took almost four years.
All through my senior year, luckily, I didn't have too many hard classes, just a lot of electives. I was able to spend most of my time at the practice space.
From the first time I heard Bob Marley or even Sublime, I wanted to move out to California and be near the ocean, start surfing, start being a part of that whole thing.
Perhaps it is time to debate culture. The common story is that in 'real' African culture, before it was tainted by the West, gender roles were rigid and women were contentedly oppressed.
German is more familiar now since I live part of the year in Rome and part in the German part of Switzerland. But it's not difficult to sing in German; it's difficult to feel in German. This takes time. It's a culture.
I remember a concert for a visiting girls school, and that was the first time I ever sang - it was always about girls - that was the main thing. But somewhere along the line, it became a cathartic thing.
My biggest enemy for the longest time was my head. When I first became successful, it made me anxious because I was overthinking everything, and you hear so many 'fail' stories.
Most of my inspiration comes from mistakes, so every time I make a massive mistake, that usually affects me so much that I have to process that via song.
Because I used to go and watch him rehearsing for pantomime, and I have adopted some of those priciples, like try to be on time, learn your script, how he approach it, etc.
When I was a kid and we first moved to the states I used to watch 'Batman' all the time - with Adam West. I finally got to work with him years ago, and I totally geeked out.
And then the last album, 'Get It', was done over a shorter period of time and I started using other musicians, as opposed to playing all the instruments myself like I did on the other two.
What happens is, when I perform, I'm somewhere else. I go back in time and get in touch with who I really am. I forget my troubles, my worries.
This is an album of songs that I've always loved, tunes that I heard. For the first time in 53 years of recording, I really had control over an entire album, start to finish.
It's okay to take time for yourself. We give so much of ourselves to others and we need to be fueled both physically and mentally. If we are in balance, it helps us in all our interactions.
When I was singing Jamie's Cryin', people were going out of their mind because it was the first time they got to see Eddie, Michael and Alex play those songs. That was a thrill.
We never thought 'Say Something' would be a holiday song. I'm still surprised that it's resonating at this time of year. Maybe that's why it's working so well - it balances out all the joy.
So if you're on tour for eight months, a year... or whatever it is you definitely don't want arguments and I'm happy to say that I've always had a really nice bunch of people around me all the time.
I don't think you can ever be ahead of your time with cynicism about that subject. No, I don't think it was ahead of its time. I think it was very much a product of its time.
