If you give a good performance, something that gets some feeling across to people, that's such a rare gift. It's underestimated at this point in history, when the music biz is inevitably turning into a kind of politics.
I just really want it at some point to be OK for women and young girls to be sexy because I think that's a power, a gift that we were given by God or the universe or whatever.
I'm at a point in my life where I have something solid now. I'm a peaceful person, and I want to be surrounded by peace no matter what I'm doing.
If certain songs become popular enough to the point where I'll be playing them the rest of my life, I don't want them all to dwell on the same down moment that I'll have to keep reliving.
When I was still drinking, I thought I was kind of in control of everything in my life and other people's lives and realized at some point that that just wasn't the case at all.
I think when it comes to pop I'm past the point of curiosity. I admit to a full-on obsession with it, and I think it's getting worse, actually.
Sometimes Hollywood is a small town on the West Coast of America at the furthest point from everywhere else, and that can make it a little provincial and insular.
With the Stray Cats at least, we really took the music somewhere else. First, we wrote our own songs. That's a real weak point in modern classics if you do rockabilly or blues.
The truth is, I probably would be dead if I had become a star, because at that point I was so closeted and so afraid of people of finding out I was gay. There was no telling what would have happened.
When you're that successful, things have a momentum, and at a certain point you can't really tell whether you have created the momentum or it's creating you.
I never played the 'decoration,' I always played the one who suffered. And then I got very lucky in my middle career, when I started playing the hero, which at that point was quite rare for women.
Particularly at around the age of 70 you reach a stage where you have to be very careful. If, at that point, you abandon the work you have been doing, there is a good chance that you will just collapse and drift.
I have the right to interpretation as a dramatist. I research. It's my responsibility to find the research. It's my responsibility to digest it and do the best that I can with it. But at a certain point that responsibility will become an interpretati...
A lot of people relate me to the blues but I don't think it's a hindrance at this point. I've been doing it long enough that I can do different things and be accepted.
I've found that festivals are a relatively painless way to meet people and make a few points that need making, without having to hit them over the head with too many speeches.
You know how you smoke out a sniper? You send a guy out in the open, and you see if he gets shot. They thought that one up at West Point.
It is not a mystical thing, however, it is obvious and practical and I think that what the performer does is to try to get to that point with every choice you make from the phrasing in a tune to the choice of tunes.
Our country was founded on immigration. We are all occupying Native American land here. At what point do we say 'It's our land, and nobody else can come here.'
So I'm trying to spread myself to the point to where I can do the night shows and not have to worry about the matinees, and do one or two matinees down through the year.
I think the show has sort of given me a name in this business and allowed a lot of people the opportunity to see what I can do, and it's just sort of like a sweet starting point.
I related to his disillusionment. Thinking that he was going for this big dream. Then he kind of saw through it all at one point and went back home. Then he started a bender, which I can relate to of course.
