The London games mark the 24th anniversary of my winning two golds and setting the world record in the heptathlon. Someone is going to want it records are made to be broken - it's only a matter of time. I hope mine will outlive me.
I'm jamming 'Black Sabbath Vol. 4' all the time. Zappa's 'Cruising With Ruben & The Jets.' A lot of Gong lately. Some Hawkwind. The Residents' 'Duck Stab' is amazing. Some Fugs. Lots of stuff man. I'm pretty schizophrenic with records.
Actually we got signed in November of 2000 with Dreamworks which is the most amazing label. We have friends on other labels and though we are not selling millions of records yet they treat us with tons of respect and give us some very good guidance.
United Artists wanted to do records with me. I had no idea what a rare thing that was... to make an album. And they put a guy with me working on songs and I got busy with films. I just kind of let it slide. Isn't that amazing?
The real amazing thing about all of this is I think I've maintained the mentality of a musician throughout it all which I'm proudest of. And I'm still playing on people's records and singing on people's records.
I wrote and produced millions and millions of selling records so my publishing company alone was worth millions of dollars. I didn't have to work anymore in life because when the rappers started sampling... I'm the most sampled artist in history.
The music industry is a strange combination of having real and intangible assets: pop bands are brand names in themselves and at a given stage in their careers their name alone can practically gaurantee hit records.
I was living on the wrong side of the tracks in Evanston Illinois in a home for boys. We had these Jackson 5 records. I really related to their voices - they were about my age but they were doing it.
Age is only a number a cipher for the records. A man can't retire his experience. He must use it. Experience achieves more with less energy and time.
People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.