I am the fourth of five children, and I can't remember a time with no babies in the house.
After moving to England I did some recording and eventually formed an English band, this was together for quite a few years with only a keyboard replacement. The band had no name, just my name.
I read and write classical piano and percussion, also guitar.
Joan was one of my biggest fans, as was Chrissie Hynde.
Len and I had parted musical ways and this was one of the problems.
Rock and roll mainly but I can play passable jazz also.
Ever since I was a child, I've just had this sense that I'm connected to the spiritual world. I thought everyone else felt the same way. I can hear voices - not all the time - but when I'm with certain people, it sometimes comes through.
I can feel things - tap into emotions. When I meet a new person, I know their life straight away. I suppose you could call it a special intuition, but it's my number one quality, and I'm always 99.9 percent right. If I don't like someone, it always turns out to be for a good reason.
I don't care what anyone says, but all children prefer their parents to be together.
As Mick Jagger will tell you, performing is an aerobic work-out. I've got the bass guitar, which is the heaviest of all the instruments, and I'm a little girl, in boiling-hot leather under the lights. You have to keep the fitness level up if you want to look good up there.
I hate canceling anything, I'm 'the show must go on' mentality. If you can crawl, you can take the stage.
I didn't think I was going to change the world for women; I just did what I did. My big thing was that I didn't change who and what I was to become successful. I will not be told what to do; I'm a real independent girl.
I was a me-ist. I believed in the right to do whatever I wanted to do regardless of gender. Still do.
I may have been sexy, but I was covered up total. There was something left to the imagination.
I used to buy scented poetry books on tour and read aloud to the band. Not what you'd expect, huh?
The bass should be the note of the bass drum, and then you've got the engine of the band that everything else builds on. Everything else, the guitar, the keyboards, is a colour.
When punk picked up black leather, I put it down.
Music has always been in my family, but it was mainly keyboards. I learned to play classical piano, but when I first heard the amazing bass guitar of James Jamerson, who played on all the big Motown hits of the '60s and '70s, I knew bass guitar was my instrument.
I got my first real bass guitar in my hands when I was 14 - a 1957 Fender Precision, which is still hanging on the wall in my front room. I loved the heaviness of it and the feel of the wood. I still do.
The golden rule for playing the bass is that's it all about feel, not just plonking away. You need to feel the sound, not using a pick or a plectrum - which has meant plenty of calluses on my fingers.
