Maybe I'll Be 48 And Die In

My Father Hated Rock And Roll - Hated It. My First Real Argument With My Father Was Over The Rolling Stones. And He Never, Ever Liked Rock And Roll. He Just Liked Me.

As An Artist, I Used To Think That My Responsibility Was To Do Good Work. But I Had To Learn From The 70s On That Being A Public Figure Presents Another Aspect Of Responsibility.

I Wrote Every Day. I Don't Think I Could Have Written Just Kids Had I Not Spent All Of The 80s Developing My Craft As A Writer.

I Learned A Lot From Arthur Rimbaud. People Talk About How He Wanted To Be A Seer And Do That Through The Derangement Of The Senses. What They Forget Was That He Also Advocated, Sternly And Austerely, That One Must Be Able To Go Through All That - And Then Articulate It.

I'm Old-fashioned. I Think William Blake And People In The Renaissance People Were Multi. Look At Da Vinci, He Was Involved In Science; And Michelangelo Was Dabbling In Poetry. Both Of Them Were Painters And Sculptors But They Also Involved Themselves With Architecture. I Honestly Don't Know What Happened In The '60s And '70s. If You Sang Rock And Roll In America At That Time Or Were Involved In Expressing Yourself Through Music Like That, Then Many Thought You Couldn't Possibly Be An Artist. That Thinking Is Archaic.