Inside each of us, there is the seed of both good and evil. It's a constant struggle as to which one will win. And one cannot exist without the other.
Everything changes and, somewhere along the line, I'm changing with it.
On Memorial Day, I don't want to only remember the combatants. There were also those who came out of the trenches as writers and poets, who started preaching peace, men and women who have made this world a kinder place to live.
The basis of everything that I plugged into when I was younger was blues, and it always stayed with me.
People we've encountered at pivotal moments who profoundly influence our direction are not necessarily the people whose names everybody knows. More often, they are the people who say or do just the right thing, at the right time.
You know, jazz is the mother of all American music. R&B and pop and rap and everything are the branches on the main tree of the life of music, American music, which is jazz.
I was in college, and very disappointed. I majored in commercial art and interior design for three or four years. At that time, it seemed the thing I really wanted to do, production design, just wasn't available in the U.K., so I turned to music.
I'm really still a child of the Forties. I still think about it a lot, about the repercussions of armed conflict. Until 1953 we had rationing. We couldn't buy meat, we couldn't buy pleasurable goods like cigarettes and sweets. I didn't starve - my family were lucky - but I knew what it was like standing in line waiting for foodstuffs.
There are so many times in one's life, when one feels he has nothing more to offer. But no, my river has not run dry.
I look upon The Animals, they were a great band initially, we left our mark, but thing was it was a band that couldn't live up to its name so I soldiered on. On one level, it was devastating for a while. On another level, maybe I should thank them for helping me make my own way in my own career.
I always wanted to be a Californian. In my wildest dreams, I always liked California - it's the place where oranges grows on trees! Fruit just falls off the trees.
One of my reasons for living in California is its close proximity to Mexico. The Latin influence is in every corner of the community. My love of Spanish music hasn't wavered since the '50s. I could hear the blues voicing from the Flamanco families and I always dig for inspiration in Latin music.
Blues was made for the recessed.
I don't think Jimi committed suicide in the conventional way. He just decided to exit when he wanted to.
I used to hang out a lot in jazz clubs, and the groups took to a kid like me who wasn't afraid to get up and sing with a jazz band. Then I started to hang out in rock clubs and learned to carry off different styles.
From my personal point of view, the Animals are dead. They killed themselves.
Have you seen 'American Idol' lately? I'm sure that some kids somewhere at this moment are thrashing themselves silly over what they call 'Rock n' Roll.'
It's more important what you leave to people on this planet. I want my legacy to exist now, currently, not after I'm gone.
It's the need for change that drives us to join forces with our brothers and sisters all around the world - but change is slow.
Having lived in the arid deserts of Southern California since the 1970s, my interest in water conservation is a very personal concern. Water! The source of life! Some people are squandering the world's most precious resource while others have too little clean water to drink.
