To write a love song that might be able to make it on the radio, that is something that is terrifying to me. But I can definitely write a song about that chair over there. That I can do, but to sit and write a pop song out of the clear blue sky, that is very difficult and I admire the people that can do it.
The shows at the Hilton are the most exciting shows I've ever done. The stage is huge, but the theater is intimate, so we can have a magnificent production and still connect with the audience.
What we hear now is great-sounding records with great-sounding grooves and loops. And the sound of these records is irresistible, but the craft of songwriting is just about over. That's why, whenever I get an opportunity to do an album full of standards, I jump at it because I miss it.
Misfits aren't misfits among other misfits.
You say something stupid and the next morning you're in the headlines.
Every few years, I go back into all the songs and I update them so that it never sounds like an oldies show. If you come to the shows, they're full of muscle. 'Copacabana' sounds like it could have been released yesterday.
My goal was always to be involved in music that would outlive me. And maybe that's actually happening.
Yeah, I'm old as the hills and you would think I'd be out to pasture someplace because I've done everything, but nothing has changed.
These days, with 'American Idol' and all the other reality shows, young people become famous overnight, and that can be very difficult to handle, the way photographers follow you around and study your every move.
My style of music is the great American songbook meets the pop world of the Seventies and Eighties.
I come from nowhere Brooklyn, New York. Williamsburg, Brooklyn. These days Williamsburg is kind of a hip area, but when I grew up there, the taxi drivers wouldn't even go over the bridge, it was so dangerous.
Atrial fibrillation has been the low man on the totem pole and so we're just trying to get more visibility about this particular disease and how dangerous this could be.
'Tryin' to Get the Feeling' has been a revelation. I'd forgotten how powerful that was. I'd forgotten how deep I can crawl into that one, and maybe because I'm older it means even more.
