'Yellow Moon' was a poem. My wife at the time, Joel - she's dead now - it was our 25th anniversary. She had the chance to go on a cruise with her sister. And I'm home with the kids and looking up, and I saw the big moon, and I just started writing.
Between yellow ribbon magnets, patriotic anthems at sports games and corporate marketing campaigns, the rhetoric that those in uniform are protecting freedom is hammered into the psyche of Americans at every turn.
Once I even took the train to Utrecht, forty miles from Amsterdam, with my yellow star, this star which I still have. Why did I go? I just wanted to visit some friends. I was a little bit crazy, a little bit insane.
How you act, walk, look and talk is all part of Hip Hop culture. And the music is colorless. Hip Hop music is made from Black, brown, yellow, red and white.
My definition of hip hop is taking elements from many other spheres of music to make hip hop. Whether it be breakbeat, whether it be the groove and grunt of James Brown or the pickle-pop sounds of Kraftwerk or Yellow Magic Orchestra, hip hop is also part of what they call hip-house now, or trip hop, or even parts of drum n' bass.
Ah, man, if I could ever hook up with Tom Waits, I'd be the happiest camper in Yellowstone, alright? That's the one guy.
My fondest hope is that 'Roots' may start black, white, brown, red, yellow people digging back for their own roots. Man, that would make me feel 90 feet tall.
Although they might not admit it, I think girls are very aware of the impact that they're having. But they never feel it themselves, and it's impossible to explain. It's like trying to tell a blind person what yellow is.
In 1990, my wife and I were married in her village in southwestern Uganda. The festivities went on for three days, and all the while a couple of dozen gray-crowned cranes, with regal bonnets of sun-shot yellow feathers, were pecking and padding around in the adjacent savanna.
I like light green, sometimes red is fun to look at, not a fan of yellow, unless it's in a rainbow or on a coffee mug or on a happy face.
