Sometimes, the songs that really affected me were not from the artist catalogue of their music, like the song 'Thunder Road' by Bruce Springsteen. I never got into any of his other music, but that song, to this day, is in my top three lyrical masterpieces of all time.
I'm into classic rock, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel.
Following the example of Bruce Springsteen or Bob Seger, I wanted to have a band, a sound and a personality, yet maintain a singular position of being able to control and motivate the flow of things.
Heavy metal to me implies a relentless, pounding, hitting-people-over-the-head music. Trend setters tend to dismiss it as basic and simple, but all the time that little trends keep coming and going, the Bob Segers, Bruce Springsteens and the Billy Squiers keep staying.
Actors are just entertainers, even the serious ones. That's all an actor is. He's like a serious Bruce Forsyth.
When I first started out, 'Time' magazine did an article on what it called 'the sick comics,' and they were myself, Shelley Berman, Nichols & May, Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce, and Mort Sahl. We were considered 'sick.'
Bruce Springsteen's world is where everybody did these terrible jobs, if they had jobs at all, and he wanted something better.
Superficial pop will always exist - there've always been Fabians - but when people like Dire Straits and Bruce Hornsby start having hits, it suggests that there's a revolution going on in music.
A lot of political music to me can be rather pedantic and corny, and when it's done right - like Bruce Springsteen or Jackson Browne or great satire from Randy Newman, there's nothing better.
You can't save the world with music. But I can try. I have the same job as Bruce Springsteen. I have to go as far as I can with it.
