I've been through a lot of experiences in my life being in the biggest band in the world.
In times of joy and sorrow, love or hate, peace and unrest, music has always been an important outlet for expressing our emotions individually and as a nation.
Whether you're black or white, you're a human - and that's what matters.
I'd say that 98 percent of the bands we've played with through the years have either broken up or are stuck in some kind of '80s revival now.
In rock n' roll, there are notes that aren't like notes. They're something in between, and it's the way you scoop into it.
You start out with your eyes wide open, and you've got dreams, and we worked really, really hard, and ours came true. So - and we're fortunate enough to keep putting out number one records, and we're fortunate enough to get out there and keep playing, and we truly have a blast.
I think, bad times, I sit down and I play - there's definitely certain songs that touch in certain ways. I go back to 'Moonlight Sonata' by Beethoven; that usually takes care of everything.
A lot of my friends are doctors, and the difference between me and them is there's no musical emergencies to pull me away from dinner. 'I need the chords for that song right now!' No, it can wait.
I like to see other bands, and I like to hear their songs, but I really like it when they engage the audience.
It's funny - Americans are the colonials who ran away from the royals, and yet we're fascinated by them.
I remember that poster of Led Zeppelin with the plane. I had it on my wall when I was a kid. I thought that was the coolest. It amazes me that it came true.
It's a sense of pride, a sense of you set out to get a record deal, and we got that. We set out to get a No. 1 record, and then we got that. Then you say, 'Wow, that was impossible and now even more impossible is to stay No. 1 and stay current and put out new records that people care about,' and we really stuck to that.
Musicals weren't on my radar.
When I'm writing Broadway, it's for a character, a man, a woman, an old guy, a kid. In the band, you're talking in your own voice in the lyrics, saying what you think or feel. On Broadway, you're expressing that through a character.
Before 'Memphis,' I had never considered working on a musical. But when Joe DiPietro sent me the script, I heard the entire score in my head.
I just write the way I feel, and if it feels good to me, hopefully everybody likes it.
I'm a good Jewish boy from Edison, New Jersey, so I went and saw 'Fiddler on the Roof' because you have to: that's part of your bar mitzvah experience.
I think 'Slippery When Wet' was the turning point, where our records represent our energy that we do live.
I grew up as one of the few Jews in Edison, and I had people tell me they hated me because of my religion.
I don't like it when bands don't want to play that one song everybody wants to hear. I think that's cheating everybody, and I think it's selfish of an artist to do that.
